


We Flow Together

by McBangle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Splash (1984) Fusion, Anxiety, Anxious Jack Zimmermann, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Panic Attacks, YouTuber Eric "Bitty" Bittle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-21 22:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16585604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McBangle/pseuds/McBangle
Summary: Jack Zimmermann was the prince of the merfolk, expected to succeed his father as king of the seven seas until he swam to the surface world on the eve of his coronation. After his tail magically transformed into legs on dry land, he learned to blend in with humans with help from Shitty Knight. Five years later, he’s attending Samwell University and things are going swimmingly (heh) until a certain baker/vlogger moves into their Haus. Will Jack be able to keep his true nature and the existence of merfolk a secret when Bitty is broadcasting his and his friends’ lives on YouTube?





	1. Stew

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [Felix](https://felixvanhusss.tumblr.com/) and [Ria](http://dentedaluminum.tumblr.com/) for making the awesome art for this and to my amazing beta [kleeklutch](http://kleeklutch.tumblr.com/) for the insights, edits, suggestions, and generally making this much better than it would have been without your assistance!
> 
> The title is from the lyrics to "Love Came For Me" by Lee Holdridge and Will Jennings, from the Splash (1984) soundtrack.

Jack sighs in relief as he settles into his bathtub. As soon as the water hits his skin, his scales emerge and his tail unfurls in the familiar transformation. By the ocean’s depths, it feels good. It’s been far too long since he’s had a long soak. He needed this, in more ways than one. It’s almost difficult to believe that as recently as five years ago, he had never set foot on land.

As a child he had, of course, heard stories about merfolk traveling to the surface world and their tails turning into two legs on dry land, but it had never occurred to him to think that he might ever experience it himself. He hadn’t had time to entertain fantasies of exploring the surface world when he had so many responsibilities to attend to as the heir to King Bob of the seven seas. A young prince has no time for adventures; a king has even less.

Jack was always acutely aware of the intense responsibilities that he would bear as king. His father ruled over not only the merfolk but all who swam the seven seas. Creatures traveled for leagues to seek his father’s sage advice. And Jack would have to live up to all of that. He would have to swim in the wake of the greatest king the seas had ever known.

Jack had spent his childhood training for all the things a young prince must know. How to behave in court, to show respect to nobility and generosity to the commonfish. He’d even challenged himself to learn all of the sea languages so he’d never need to rely on a translator.

As he’d grown older, his father had often spoken to him of the art of diplomacy. Predators and prey alike deserve to live and to eat, and King Bob had negotiated a tenuous peace between the species of the water. He’d needed to constantly work to maintain that peace, as would Jack one day, lest the seven seas fall into a terrible war.

Of course, with so many things to learn, there was no time for play nor for friends, but such sacrifices were necessary for the greater good of the kingdom. Jack was no ordinary merchild and he should not have expected those kinds of luxuries. All of the sea creatures were depending on young Jack to live up to his potential; he couldn’t have let them down by wasting his valuable time on play.

Jack had known this. He’d understood this. And yet at the same time it had all been too much. All far too much. Of course, Jack could never have admitted these feelings to his parents. Princes were expected to serve as stoic role models to the rest of the kingdom. No amount of fear nor self-doubt should ever show.

At least, Jack had reassured himself a thousand times over, at least he had many years to prepare before he would need to become the king. Years in which he would grow in strength and wisdom; years to learn at his father’s fins. Surely, with years of study he would be ready to take on this responsibility.

And so it came as no small shock when his father had announced at his fiftieth birthday celebration that he would retire in just one year. No king had ever stepped down of their own volition; been forced out due to political scandal, yes, assassinated, true, but voluntary retirement in middle age was unheard of.

King Bob had reassured everyone present that he was leaving the seas in capable hands. That Jack would be an even greater king than he had been.

Just like that, Jack’s future had been set in stone. He would rule the seven seas, ready or not, at only eighteen years of age. He would either swim among the greatest kings in history, or sink like a stone, forever remembered as a disappointment and a failure. He had only two paths to swim for the rest of his life, and neither seemed inviting.

Until, on the eve of his coronation, he realized he had a third option: he could simply escape.

No doubt his parents, and the rest of the kingdom, must have been surprised and confused when they woke up the next morning and found Jack missing. Or perhaps they had expected it; had already seen him for the failure that he knew himself to be. Jack may never know how they reacted; he was far away from his father’s kingdom by the time anyone would have noticed his disappearance.

He hadn’t planned his escape in advance; he hadn’t thought about it, was barely thinking straight at the time. All he had known was that he couldn’t be the king, could never be the king, and he needed to get away _right then_. And so he’d swum as far away as he could, to the place where he knew no merfolk would ever think to look for him: on the surface world.

That first summer, after he’d pulled himself onto the shores of an island that he came to know as Nantucket, he’d had to learn so much about human culture. He was lucky to make fast friends with another teenage boy who was spending the summer alone at his father’s beach house. Shitty had taken him in when anyone else would have undoubtedly called the police on the strange naked young man wandering the beach and speaking in a foreign tongue. He’d taken it in stride the first time he’d seen Jack’s legs transform into his tail in water, had taught him to speak and read English, and introduced him to the human world.

Jack had been sure that their friendship would come to an end when the summer was through. Yet, Shitty had insisted that Jack come back to Boston with him. To Jack’s immense relief, Shitty’s mother hadn’t questioned Shitty’s explanation that Jack was a homeless youth he had befriended over the summer, and had welcomed him into their home.

Jack will forever be grateful to Professor Endicott-Knight. She’d had to convince the Andover trustees to break a lot of rules in order to enroll him. He suspects that in the end, he was admitted due to a combination of Shitty’s family connections, Professor Endicott-Knight’s forceful insistence, and a large donation made in his name.

The Andover students had been cruel at times. They had teased him about his accent and his lack of familiarity with apparently-common human concepts and technologies. Jack was terrified that he would be found out and forced to return to the sea, but Shitty had simply shrugged and told people that Jack was French Canadian. Anyone with a basic familiarity with Quebec or Canada should have been able to see through that explanation, yet none of his classmates seemed to care enough to question it.

Although Jack had initially been placed in remedial classes with much younger students, he loved learning and had advanced quickly. Only three years later, he and Shitty had both graduated with honors and entered Samwell University.

Shitty and Jack had concluded early on that they would need to live off-campus in order to protect Jack’s secret. And yet, they couldn’t find any apartments that they could afford with just the two of them, and they hadn’t trusted any of the prospective roommates that they had interviewed. They had been on the brink of giving up when they’d found a Craigslist ad so ideal it had practically seemed as if it were written just for them.

> _Discreet sophomore ISO two roommates to share off-campus house. Renting two spare bedrooms with adjoining private bath. Total privacy ensured. Ideal for incoming frosh friends looking for a third roommate to split the rent. Call J. Johnson at 508-555-1337._

Although the house (or “Haus”, as Shitty quickly dubbed it) was run down, it was basically a perfect setup. Jack could spend as much time in the bath as he wanted, a luxury after having to hide his true nature from Professor Endicott-Knight for three years. Their roommate, John Johnson, never commented when Jack did or said something unusual, always had somewhere else to be without being asked when Jack needed privacy, and was generally extremely chill, if a bit weird.

However, the rent was steep even split three ways. Shitty and Jack had just started considering other housing options that spring when Johnson suddenly proposed that they clean out the attic and rent it out in order to lower their individual shares of the rent. Even better, he’d met two prospective freshmen during campus tours and he was positive that they would make perfect Hausmates. Johnson wasn’t even a tour guide; he somehow has a knack for meeting the right people at the exact right time.

Justin and Adam are… well, they’re a bit much. Adam is too big and too loud. Worse, Justin is Canadian. Even after over a year of living together, Jack is still anxious that Justin will see through his "French Canadian" cover story. He spent most of his sophomore year avoiding Justin and studiously changing the subject away from Canada any time Justin was around.

On top of all of that, Adam and Justin insist on throwing parties – “kegsters”, as they call them. Much to Jack’s dismay, the first time they’d thrown a kegster, Shitty had reacted as though he’d found his calling in life. After finding himself surrounded by strangers who were dancing to loud music, making messes, and even hooking up in his own Haus, Jack had decided he’d rather spend the rest of the parties upstairs in his room, guarding the door from drunken strangers.

But, Justin and Adam always clean up after parties, they generally keep to themselves and don’t judge Jack more than occasional eyerolls and shrugs, and they always pay their rent on time. They’re annoying, but in retrospect Jack realizes that they are far from the worst of all possible Hausmates.

Their living situation could have remained the same for another year until Johnson’s graduation. It should have remained the same. Yet, late in the spring of Jack’s sophomore year, Johnson had cryptically announced that he was moving out. He wouldn’t share any details as to why or where he was moving other than that he “was needed elsewhere”. Yet again, he had already found a new replacement to take his place in the following year: a perky blonde incoming freshman from Georgia.

Jack flips the lever to drain the water out of the tub, shaking his head at the memory of Johnson’s announcement. As the water level drops, Jack’s scales and tailfin recede and his tail painlessly splits up the middle into two legs.

Jack climbs out of the tub, thinking with some irritation that he had known it was a mistake to rent to Bittle, right from the start. He’s just so… perky. And dramatic. And messy. He practically sheds mess everywhere he goes. And his music! If he isn’t waking Jack up by belting out pop music at some ungodly hour of the morning, then he’s yelling at Jack for not knowing the names of his favorite singers.

Jack was never exactly one for fashion. It took until his first Boston winter to understand why humans even bother with clothes in the first place and he still can’t wrap his head around why anyone would care in the least about fashion. If it fits and it’s functional and comfortable, nothing else should matter. But even he can recognize that the tiny shorts Bittle insists on wearing are practically a mating call. Yet he practically runs out of the room any time Jack enters it. It’s… frustrating.

Jack pulls a towel off of the rack and ties it tightly around his waist, wondering what exactly Shitty, Justin and Adam see in Bittle. They all seem to like him, for some reason. They even gave him a cutesy nickname – Bitty. Lately it seems as though every time Jack walks into the Haus, they’re all laughing away at some private joke or other. Bittle is full of smiles and laughter for their other Hausmates, but he’s cold and snippy toward Jack.

As soon as Jack enters his bedroom, he’s greeted by the sight of Shitty sprawled out over his bed wearing nothing but his boxer briefs. “Brah, you’ve got to chillax about Bitty.” Shitty spends so much time in Jack’s room it’s as if he doesn’t have one of his own. Then again, Shitty was never big on the concept of private property. “I get it, I do. When I first heard his accent, I’d assumed he’d be a bigoted dickfaced cockhole, but he’s actually pretty okay.”

Jack snorts. “He takes up too much space.” He strides to his dresser and pulls out a comfortable t-shirt and pair of sweatpants and begins to pull them on.

“Too much space?” Shitty asks incredulously. “He’s the tiniest person in our Haus.”

“He takes up too much space,” Jack repeats emphatically. “He still hasn’t unpacked. His boxes are all over the Haus. He hogs the kitchen. And he’s moved my things. Yesterday I couldn’t find my peanut butter; he’s filled our cabinets with pots and pans.”

Jack rummages among the papers neatly piled on his desk and then pulls out the scratch paper he’d used to check his math earlier today. “Look.” He hands the paper to Shitty, who squints at it. “If each of us kicks in $111.25 extra per month, then we can cover the rent and utilities with just the four of us. We don’t need a fifth roommate.”

Shitty shakes his head. “It’s not about the rent. I like the little fucker. So do Justin and Adam. They asked me to talk to you about being nicer to him.”

“Nicer to Bittle?” Jack scoffs. “Did you ask him to be nicer to me? Yesterday when I suggested he use protein powder in his pancake mix, he said ‘bless your heart’ to me. The words were nice, but the way he said it was _not_ nice.”

Shitty shakes his head. “You didn’t like Johnson at first either.”

“Sure I did,” Jack protests.

“You hated that he plays hockey!” Shitty protests. “You told me that it was barbaric of him to strap knives to his feet and carve lines into frozen water.”

Jack shrugs. “I got over it.”

Shitty sits upright and points an accusing finger at Jack. “And Adam and Justin annoyed the fuck out of you when they first moved in last year. In fact, I think they _still_ do!”

“Euh…” Jack scratches at the back of his neck. “I’m… learning to like them. At least they’re not as bad as Bittle.”

“Bullshit. You just don’t like change.” Shitty crosses his arms over his chest smugly. “But you need to get used to it, brah. College is all _about_ change.”

“ _I_ don’t like change?” Jack wheels on Shitty. “When did _you_ swim halfway across the ocean to go live with an entirely different species?”

“You only did that to escape becoming king.” As soon as the words leave Shitty’s mouth, he turns pale, his eyes going wide. “I… I’m so sorry, brah, that was way over the line, I shouldn’t have…”

The blood is rushing in Jack’s ears and he’s seeing red. “Out.” The words come out so much calmer than he means them. He squeezes his hands at his side. Shitty has known him long enough to know not to raise that topic – how sore it is even five years later.

Shitty scrambles off the bed and doesn’t even bother to try to rationalize himself as he walks out the door. He does, however, have a serious problem with knowing when to stop talking. “What you’re feeling right now is completely valid, Jack. You have every right to be angry at me – hell, I’m angry at me.” He opens the door to their shared bathroom, then turns back to look at Jack again. “I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that what I said was totally inapp–”

“Shitty,” Jack intones warningly.

“Right. Sorry. G’night.” Shitty pulls the door shut on his way out.

Jack flops onto the bed and throws an arm over his eyes. He takes deep, slow, calming breaths as Professor Endicott-Knight had taught him, and focuses on the present. He’s here on the surface world. No one from his father’s kingdom has any idea where he is, and no one up here even suspects he’s a merperson other than Shitty. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Jack has known Shitty for a very long time. He knows that Shitty sometimes thoughtlessly says insensitive things and he’s sure that he hadn’t meant to bring up that old wound. In truth, it was partly Jack’s fault for even bringing up his swim to the surface in the first place. Jack knows he’ll probably forgive and forget tomorrow. Next week at the latest. For tonight, he just needs to stew.


	2. Slip

By the next morning, Jack has a plan. It’s a simple plan, and it’s a good plan, and it will work.

If the guys don’t want to get rid of Bittle because they think Jack isn’t being nice enough to him, then Jack will be nice to Bittle. He’s studied human behavior for five years now; surely he can act nicely enough to one insignificant little frosh to satisfy his Hausmates. He will show them all how nice he can be. And then when they see what a spiny little sea urchin Bittle is despite Jack’s niceness, _then_ he’ll convince them to kick him out.

It’s a very good plan.

Sady, he’s so engrossed in thought that he doesn’t notice the messy pile of textbooks that someone had dropped on the ground just outside the kitchen door until he trips over them. Oh, who is he kidding? He knows exactly which someone it was. The same someone who has been messing up the Haus – messing up his _life_ – for the last several weeks.

Every creative swear word Jack knows bursts forth from him like a geyser. When he’s just about done, he stomps his foot and yells “Bittle! Come out here and pick up your mess!”

“Good lord, Jack, you didn’t need to yell.” Bittle saunters out of the kitchen looking irritated. As if he were the one who had been wronged. “I was right here in the kitchen the whole time.”

Jack is halfway to upright when it hits him. When he realizes what a colossal mistake he’s just made. In his anger and frustration, he hadn’t only sworn in English. No, most of what he’d said had been Mermish. His throat constricts and blood rushes in his ears. If Bittle had been just inside the kitchen while Jack had been swearing in Mermish at the top of his voice then there was no way he hadn’t…

“And don’t think I didn’t hear you yelling in French, Jack Zimmermann.” Bittle points an accusatory finger at Jack before scooping his books off of the floor and dropping them on the bottom stair – possibly the only _worse_ place for them than on the ground. “You always do that, you know.”

Jack somehow manages to drag his eyes away from the pile of books on the stairs and back to Bittle. “Euh… what? What do I do?”

Bittle glares at Jack, one hand on a hip. “You always speak French when you don’t want me to understand what you’re saying.”

And there’s… there’s a lot for Jack to unpack there. He “always” speaks “French”? He’d thought he’d been doing a good job of keeping things under wraps, but if Bittle has overheard him speak Mermish that much then the situation is much worse than he’d feared.

And _exactly_ why he’s right to want to kick Bittle out of the Haus! No one else irritates him enough to make him break out into Mermish without even realizing it. It’s bad enough that he’s done it in front of someone who doesn’t realize he’s not speaking French; if a real French speaker had ever heard him speak Mermish then they would have seen right through this ridiculous “French Canadian” lie that…

Wait.

“Euh. Bittle.” Jack rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “Aren’t you… taking a French course right now?”

Bittle rolls his eyes hard. “Ugh. You never stop chirping me, do you?” He stalks back into the kitchen.

That’s… huh. Okay. Maybe Jack isn’t in quite as much danger as he’d thought. If he doesn’t break his neck tripping over Bittle’s messes.

~~~~~

“Ohhhhhhh shit, Jack, we’ve got a problem.” Shitty barrels into his room the next afternoon. Before Jack even knows what is happening, much less can stop it, Shitty has settled himself cross-legged on Jack’s bed, with his laptop on his lap and… not much else.

Jack furrows his brow and tilts his head. “Please tell me you’re not sitting naked on top of my pillow.”

“ _Et tu_ , Jack?” Shitty sighs dramatically before wrenching Jack’s pillow out from under his butt and tossing it to the foot of the bed. It’s… marginally better, Jack supposes. “You were the one who walked around naked your whole first summer on the surface. I practically had to beg you to put clothes on before leaving my dad’s summer house. You’re the one who taught me that nudity is natural and body shame is a useless human trait.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “That was _before_ your mother told me that I needed to put some clothes on if I wanted to stay under her roof.”

“We’re not under my mother’s roof anymore, Jack.” Shitty waggles his eyebrows and then sighs, tossing his hair to the side. “We’re off-topic. Are you going to stand over there and bitch about my personal apparel choices, or are you going to come over here and see this?”

“It’s more of a hygiene concern, but fine,” Jack grouses. He crosses the room and settles on the bed next to Shitty so he can see whatever it is that Shitty so obviously wants Jack to see.

Jack wrinkles his brow at the frozen image on Shitty’s laptop of his newest roommate standing in the Haus kitchen. He glances at the URL. “Bittle’s on YouTube?”

“It’s his vlog,” Shitty nods.

“His blog?”

“Yeah… what? No.” Shitty shakes his head. “His _vlog._ ”

“Euh…”

“Bitty has a baking channel,” Shitty clarifies, or at least attempts to.

“Where?”

“Here.”

“In our Haus?”

“No, on YouTube!” Shitty closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Watch this.” He clicks on the frozen video screen.

“Hi, y’all!” YouTube-Bittle waves enthusiastically at the screen. “I asked what recipes you wanted to see, and you answered! By popular demand, today’s recipe will be peach cobbler.” He rolls his eyes fondly at the screen. “Yes, I’m from Georgia, and _yes_ , we do eat other foods. But my Moomaw just happens to have the best peach cobbler recipe known to man or woman, so y’all are in luck.”

Jack turns to Shitty. “Why are we watching this?”

“Shh!” Shitty raises a finger. “Keep watching.”

Screen-Bittle rubs his hands together. “Now, before we get started, I’ve gotten a lot of tweets and comments asking how things are going with my Hausmates.” His face brightens. “It’s going great! Shitty is, well, _unique_ but extremely welcoming. Justin and Adam have basically adopted me as their pet project. Lord, the antics these boys get up to! And Jack…” He sighs heavily. “…is Jack. The less said about him, the better.”

“You see?” Jack crows, pointing at the screen victoriously. “I told you he wasn’t giving me a chance! You all said it was my fault, but _he_ –”

“Yeah, yeah.” Shitty cuts him off with a pat to his upper arm. “This actually isn’t about Bitty’s and your trust issues.”

“Then what is it about?” Jack presses. “I need to get some studying done, and I’m not actually interested in Bittle’s recipes.”

“You’ll know it when you hear it,” Shitty promises.

On screen, Bittle has lined up several ingredients and is babbling on about measurements when he jumps at the sound of a loud off-screen clatter. He holds a hand to his heart. “What in the…?”

Shitty was right. Jack instantly recognizes the problem, as soon as his own voice rings out in a string of distinctively Mermish profanities.

Shitty pauses the video with a tap on the space key, then turns to him smugly. “Did you forget to tell me something, Jack?”

“Euh. I hadn’t realized he was making a video?” Jack chuckles nervously.

“You spoke Mermish right in front of him,” Shitty points out in a scarily calm voice.

“I hadn’t realized he was in the kitchen,” Jack explains. “And I wasn’t thinking straight. Did you know he drops his books right on the floor whenever he feels like it? I tripped over a pile of them. I could have gotten hurt!”

“ _He_ could have figured out you’re a merperson,” Shitty argues. “He still fucking could!”

“Actually, I don’t think he will.” Jack shakes his head. “He thought I was speaking French.”

Shitty blinks at him. “That’s… really?”

Jack shrugs.

Shitty shakes his head. “Regardless, Bitty posted this on YouTube. Anyone could watch this and figure out that you weren’t speaking a human language, brah. We need to make a contingency plan.”

Jack scoffs. “I doubt it. How many people could possibly watch Bittle’s baking videos? If anyone asks, we’ll tell them there was a problem with the audio. This will all blow over in a day or two, believe me.”

“I don’t know, Jack,” Shitty protests. “I think this could turn into something pretty fucking big. We really need to –”

“Why, does Bittle say something about it on his video?” Jack asks. Why in the world would Bittle leave Jack’s Mermish shouting in the video anyway? It doesn’t have anything to do with peach pie or whatever recipe he was planning to show off. Surely he knows how to edit his own video files.

“Oh, uh, you know, that doesn’t really matter.” Shitty starts to close the laptop, but Jack blocks it with his hand and pushes it back open again.

“No, I want to see this,” Jack insists. “We need to know what we’re up against, eh?”

The video resumes with Jack shouting “Bittle! Come out here and pick up your mess!”

Bittle rolls his eyes so hard that for a moment Jack can only see the whites of his eyes. “Excuse me, _his majesty_ demands my presence.”

Shitty makes a sound suspiciously like a snort. Jack cuts his eyes at Shitty, but Shitty tilts his head so that his long hair falls in a curtain blocking Jack’s view of his face.

The video makes a jump cut to Bittle shaking his head at the camera, lips pursed. “Well, don’t say I never showed you what it’s like living with Jack. _Some_ people have difficulties minding their own business. We can’t all be neat freaks like Mr. Zimmermann…”

“Yeah, I’m gonna stop this right here. The rest of the video isn’t really relevant.” Shitty shuts the laptop.

“No, come on, I want to see it.” Jack reaches for Shitty’s laptop, but Shitty lifts it out of Jack’s reach and scrambles off the bed, giving Jack visual confirmation that he isn’t wearing any clothes. “I want to know what Bittle’s saying about me behind my back.”

“No way, brah.” Shitty shakes out his head. “It would be a massive invasion of his privacy. If Bitty wanted us to watch his vlog then he would have told us about it himself.”

“But you’re watching it without his knowledge,” Jack points out.

Shitty flinches, then nods. “Fair point, Jack, fair point. Neither of us should watch Bitty’s channel unless he invites us to.” He walks out of the room, turning to face Jack at the door to their shared bathroom. “Just… be careful, okay? And let me know if anyone says anything about the video to you. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”

Jack scoffs. “Nobody is going to say anything about the video, because no one is going to see it.”

Shitty waves a hand dismissively at Jack, then pulls the bathroom door shut behind him as he leaves.

Jack hops off the bed and paces his room for a few seconds before sitting down at his desk. He boots up his computer. His right hand hesitates over his mouse momentarily, and then he opens his web browser.

It only takes a minute or two to locate Bittle’s YouTube channel. It’s called “Bake it ’Til You Make It”. Cute. He opens the most recent video, scrolling through it to the point where he and Shitty had left off.

Screen-Bittle crosses his arms and cuts his eyes to the side, letting out a huff of annoyance. After a moment, he closes his eyes and inhales deeply. He visibly relaxes as he exhales, letting his arms fall to his side. When he opens his eyes, he smiles brightly at the camera. “I’m so sorry I let y’all see that side of me. Let’s bake some peach cobbler!”

Bittle doesn’t speak further about Jack or any of their Hausmates for the remainder of the video. He demonstrates the recipe in a manner that, Jack must admit, is quite charming. He explains the steps using clear and simple instructions that even Jack can follow, frequently punctuated with anecdotes about his Moomaw (whatever that is). And his smile is, quite frankly, dazzling.

Jack is surprisingly disappointed to see the video end. He pokes around Bittle’s channel some more. According to his “About” page, he had first opened his account five years earlier, although his oldest video is from two years ago. Jack scrolls back through Bittle’s video history and selects one dated the week that Bittle had first moved in.

Bittle sits in his room. He looks small and exhausted. He begins by apologizing to his viewers for not having updated in a while. “With classes just starting and the way my roommates – I mean Hausmates – love to party, I mean…” He yawns widely. “I haven’t been this tired since…well, I don’t know the last time I’ve been this tired.”

Bittle continues, thanking his viewers for their support. “My Hausmates are… um.” He brings his hands together under his chin and then rotates them forward, gazing off to the side. “I guess it just takes time to click with new people. Especially people who are so…”

Bittle rotates his hand in the air in front of his mouth, as if willing words to come forth. “Well, I came up North to Samwell to meet different kinds of people, didn’t I? And Shitty sure is… different.” He sighs. “I still don’t know his first name.”

“Then there’s Justin and Adam. Sorry – Adam and Justin.” He shakes his head. “I’m still not sure which is which. They’re… friendly. And big. They’re just big, friendly jocks.” Bittle leans forward urgently, his face contorting into a look of horror. “The state of the kitchen when I moved in! Did I tell you they had filled the fridge with nothing but beer and the cabinets with sriracha?” He leans back in his chair. “But, well, I’m sure they mean well.”

Bittle picks up a pencil from his desk and fiddles with it absentmindedly. “And last but not least: Jack.” He wraps one arm protectively about his upper body and rubs at his opposite elbow. “Jack’s…” He coughs. “He’s… not the friendliest person I’ve ever met.” He smiles tentatively at the screen. “But I’m sure he’ll come to like me in time! And if he doesn’t, well…” He looks off-screen and sighs again. “I just need to survive one year in this Haus and then I can find somewhere else to live next year.”

Jack watches a few other videos, but they’re mostly the same. Bittle is vivacious when he talks about baking, but shrinks into himself when the subject changes to his Hausmates, particularly Jack. While he seems to warm up to Shitty, Justin and Adam over time, if anything he appears to grow even less comfortable with Jack. Jack cringes when Bittle admits to thinking about transferring after an incident in which Jack had yelled at him in front of the whole Haus.

By the third video, Jack feels too uncomfortable to continue. It’s not just that Bittle doesn’t like him. It’s that Bittle is clearly intimidated by him. No, Bittle clearly thinks that Jack hates him. And, if he’s really going to be honest with himself, Shitty was right. It _is_ an invasion of Bittle’s privacy for Jack to watch these videos. Bittle clearly never meant for him or any of their Hausmates to watch them.

Jack closes his browser and pushes his chair away from his desk. Well, shit. He only wanted Bittle to move out or at least be less annoying. He hadn’t meant to actually make him feel bad.

Fuck.

Shitty’s right. And Adam and Justin.

Jack’s going to have to be nicer to Bittle. _Actually_ nicer, not just acting nicer for show.

Even if it kills him.


	3. Exposed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a panic attack about halfway through the chapter. More info in the end notes for those who wish to avoid it.

A clang rings out from the kitchen early the next morning, immediately followed by a high-pitched squeal. “What in the…?” Jack rushes into the kitchen from the staircase.

Bittle stands next to the kitchen table, a frying pan apparently discarded at his feet, his eyes glued to his phone. So many emotions cross Bittle’s face – shock, excitement, joy, even something that looks a bit like fear – that it’s difficult for Jack to understand what’s happening.

Jack thinks through his observations of human behavior, trying to work out an explanation. Squeals usually indicate excitement, don’t they? But what if he had heard him wrong? Was it a scream of terror? Of pain? Perhaps Bittle had dropped the pan on his foot.

“Euh,” Jack starts tentatively, “are you… okay?”

Bittle’s response comes out as a stunned whisper. “Twenty… thousand.” He drags his eyes away from his phone to look up at Jack. “I have _twenty thousand_ new subscribers just since yesterday, Jack! My phone is _blowing up!_ Oh my lord, I need to turn off notifications! The number of comments I’ve received, you wouldn’t believe it!”

He presses both hands to his cheeks, his phone squished between his right hand and his face. For a moment, Jack is vaguely reminded of the little blonde boy whose parents had left him by himself in their house in an old movie he’d once seen on T.V.

“I have _never_ gotten so many comments! Oh my goodness!” Bittle giggles. “I _never_ thought I’d see the day that I’d have so many comments that I wouldn’t have time to reply to them all! …No.” He holds up a hand in the air, resolute. “I _will_ reply to them all. Mama didn’t raise me to ignore comments – at least the ones that aren’t spam. But oh, there’s so many of them!” He checks his phone again before raising his eyes to Jack’s in awe. “I think I might be _trending!”_

Aaaaaaaand Jack’s lost. Something about… subscribers? And comments? He sneaks a glance at Bittle’s phone to verify that it’s not literally blowing up.

“Is this, euh, about Twitter?”

“What? No.” Bittle screws up his face and shoots Jack a strange look. “It’s my… oh.” Realization dawns on his face. “I, um.” He dips his eyes and runs a hand across the back of his neck. “I actually have a YouTube channel. Just a silly little thing about baking and, um… just – it’s about baking.” A flush spreads across his cheeks.

Jack’s heart stutters. “Oh. That is… not… something that I knew about.”

Bittle rolls his eyes. “Well, no, I could hardly have expected _you_ to have known about my YouTube channel,” he chirps. “Do you even know what YouTube is?”

“Of course I know what YouTube is!” Jack retorts. “It’s the one with the videos. Like ‘David After Dentist’ and ‘Double Rainbow.’”

“Those are dated references, but okay,” Bittle mutters.

“So, can I watch your YouTube videos?” Jack asks hopefully. Watching them last night wouldn’t have been _quite_ as much of a violation of Bittle’s privacy, after all, if Bittle didn’t mind.

“No,” Bittle replies, much too quickly.

“Oh. Right. Because you probably don’t want us to see what you’re saying about us.”

Bittle shoots him a cutting look. “I don’t talk about my Hausmates on YouTube,” he says in a voice that even Jack can tell is overly sweet. “I told you, it’s a baking vlog.”

Shitty chooses that exact moment to bound into the kitchen. “Sup, brahs?”

“Bittle… has… a YouTube channel.” Jack raises his eyebrows meaningfully at Shitty.

“Swawesome.” Shitty fist bumps Bittle easily, then grabs a box of cereal from atop the fridge. “I’m honored that you trust us enough to share that information, my dude.” He pulls a milk carton out of the fridge and sniffs at it experimentally before setting the milk and cereal down on the table. He grabs a bowl and spoon off the drying rack, plops down in a chair and starts eating.

Bittle coughs, his face scarlet. “It wasn’t exactly planned, but I suppose the cat’s out of the bag now.”

“It’s a baking channel, and he doesn’t talk about us,” Jack announces. “Ow!” He grits his teeth and glares resentfully at Shitty. Shitty continues shoveling cereal into his mouth as if he hadn’t just kicked Jack in the shin.

“Of course I don’t talk about you,” Bittle responds primly. “I would never violate my Hausmates’ privacy like that.”

Jack coughs. Shitty eats another spoonful of cereal and stares hard at the kitchen table.

Bittle narrows his eyes at Jack.

“…Sorry?” Jack responds, not entirely sure what he’s apologizing for at the moment but it’s probably deserved.

“Jack. You’ve been standing in my kitchen for at least five minutes.” Jack just barely stops himself from correcting Bittle that it’s _their_ kitchen. “Are you going to eat something, or are you just here to watch me?”

Jack jumps. “Oh. Er. Right.” He grabs a jar of peanut butter from a cabinet, a butter knife from a drawer and a loaf of whole wheat bread from their bread box. (Because now they have a bread box. They have a lot of pointless new items in their kitchen ever since Bittle moved in.) He settles on the chair across from Shitty’s and goes about making himself a peanut butter sandwich.

He can practically hear Bittle shaking his head at him. “You boys.” Bittle finally picks up the frying pan and busies himself about the kitchen. After a few minutes, he makes a discontented noise. “Hmmm.”

Jack glances up at Bittle frowning at his phone. Bittle must feel his gaze on him, because he looks up himself and scowls at Jack. “It’s nothing.”

Yet, a few moments later Bittle audibly huffs again. Shitty and Jack share a glance across the table.

“Sup?” Shitty asks.

Bittle squints at his phone. “It’s nothing,” he repeats. “It’s… well no, it’s the comments on my latest video. They just… they don’t make any sense. They’re not about me or the recipe at all. It’s all just wild conspiracy theories that have nothing to do with my vlog!”

Shitty straightens up. “Conspiracy theories?”

“Yes! It’s just…” Bittle sighs. “It’s silly. People are saying that… that…” He flushes pink. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just…” He shakes his head. “Lord! An awful lot of drama over a few seconds of the latest video!”

Shitty raises his eyebrows at Jack. Jack looks away. It probably has nothing to do with him, and even if it did, Bittle made it very clear that he didn’t want Jack to have anything to do with his videos, so Jack won’t get himself involved.

~~~~~

That resolution lasts only a few hours. When Jack returns to the Haus from his last class that afternoon, Shitty pulls him aside, speaking in an urgent but hushed tone. “Fuckin’ A, Jack, you need to see these comments on Bitty’s vlog.”

Jack shakes his head vehemently. “Bittle told us that he didn’t want us to watch his videos.”

“It’s too late, motherfucker, we’re in too deep now.” He pushes his phone in front of Jack’s face.

The comment section is full of commenters alternately debating what language Jack had spoken in the video and accusing Bittle of doctoring the audio to increase his hits.

Shitty hisses, “I told you people would recognize that you were speaking Mermish!”

Jack shakes his head. “No one is going to recognize it was Mermish because no one on the surface has ever heard Mermish! …Unless they’re merfolk too. Does anyone in the comments section say that they’re merfolk?” His stomach roils at the thought – a mix of the old fear of being sent back to the sea and a stab of excitement of meeting another merperson after so many years on the surface.

Shitty tilts his head and squints skeptically at Jack. “No…”

Jack points to a comment that begins “I’m here from reddit and…” “What’s that?” he asks.

“What?” Shitty asks absentmindedly.

“Reddit? Is that a country?”

“Nah, brah, it’s a social media aggregator. You will never find a more wretched hive of… Wait a minute.” He takes his phone back and taps at it furiously. “Fuuuuuuuuck. You’re trending on Reddit!”

He holds the phone where they can both see it as he scrolls past a series of headlines. Several of them reference a “mystery language” and an alarming number display screenshots from Bittle’s peach cobbler video.

“Motherfuck! They’ve set up a subreddit!” Shitty taps on the phone, opening up a new screen titled r/MysteryLanguage. The subtitle declares “Conlang? Alien language? Audio glitch? This is the place to discuss all of your theories about the BITYMI mystery language. **We respect ALL views and opinions.**” The subreddit currently has 37,732 subscribers.

“What’s that?” Jack points to the first word in the subtitle just before Shitty scrolls down the screen.

“Hm?” Shitty scrolls back up and peers at the word in question. “Conlang? It’s a constructed language. Like Klingon or Elvish.”

“Euh…” Jack shrugs.

“You know, like from Star Trek or…” Shitty shakes his head. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. The point is, the people who think you were speaking a conlang think it was a made-up language. That’s a good thing.”

The top post, accompanied by a link to Bittle’s video, compares Jack’s Mermish to several human and made-up languages (conlangs, Shitty corrects him) in great linguistic detail. It’s fascinating. Jack had always thought of human languages as entirely foreign from the sea languages, but the poster (or redditor, as Shitty tells him the users on this site call themselves) describes many connections between Jack’s Mermish and several human languages. Intriguingly, they argue that the “mystery language” is most similar to several conlangs, such as…

Shitty scrolls past before Jack can finish reading the post. Jack makes a disappointed noise, but Shitty shakes his head at him. “We need to see what people think you’re saying. The details of how they got there don’t matter.”

Jack makes a mental note to find that post again later.

The next several posts contain lively debates among three factions: those who think that the video was doctored, those who think it was unedited but staged, and those who think it caught a true, unscripted expression of an alien language. Most of the redditors fall into the first two categories. It’s a relief to see. All of Shitty’s worries were for nothing. Well, virtually nothing.

“For fuck’s sake, you’re focusing on the wrong redditors,” Shitty argues. “It’s the true believers that we need to look out for, not the skeptics.”

“But there’s so few of them,” Jack insists. “And they all have different theories. They’re disorganized, no one seems to believe them, and so far no one has come close to–”

“Holy _fuck_.” Shitty holds up one hand to silence Jack while tapping on one of the posts to open it. “Right there, motherfucker.” He points insistently at his phone. “Right there. I told you. This is the kind of shit we need to worry about.”

The post is titled “WAKE UP TO THE TRUTH THAT THE SO-CALLED MYSTERY LANGUAGE WAS MERMAID-SPEAK.” Jack snatches the phone out of Shitty’s hand and reels backwards, his heart racing. He reaches his free hand out for something to support him, and touches the green couch. He spins to lean over the couch back, taking shallow breaths.

“Come on, brah, deep slow breaths, you know the way.” Shitty rubs circles on Jack’s back, his voice quiet and reassuring. “I shouldn’t have gotten worked up over this – that’s on me – but we got this, Jack, we got this.”

Jack closes his eyes and takes cleansing breaths. He envisions blowing out his worries just like Professor Endicott-Knight had taught him. Slowly, he feels his heart rate slow and some of the tightness in his throat start to loosen.

“There you go, there you go.” Shitty continues rubbing circles on his back. “Come on, have a seat, you’ll feel better.” He leads Jack around to the front of the couch. Jack gratefully sits down, leaning forward to put his head between his knees until he finally feels ready to sit upright.

“You okay? You sure you feel up to this?” Shitty asks attentively.

Jack nods. He’s not at one hundred percent yet, but he’s well enough to face his fear. If he doesn’t read the post then he’ll just spiral further into anxiety imagining the worst-case scenarios. “Let’s see what it says.”

It’s… actually not that bad. Or at any rate, not that bad for Jack. Jack had expected another detailed post like the linguistics one, but “WAKE UP TO THE TRUTH THAT THE SO-CALLED MYSTERY LANGUAGE WAS MERMAID-SPEAK” _was_ the entire top post in the thread. It only has eight up votes. The next post in the thread, with 286 up votes, simply says “Explain.”

The original redditor – MermaidSeeker – had then replied with an extremely rambling and incoherent rationale for why they believed Jack was speaking “mermaid-speak”. As far as Jack can tell, the redditor had simply wanted to believe in merfolk (although they exclusively used the term “mermaids”, even when speaking about Jack) and had seen Bittle’s video as a sign that their theory was correct. The comments in response to their explanation all say variations on “it’s always mermaids with you,” “enough with the mermaids,” or “we get it, you’re obsessed with mermaids.”

“It’s nothing,” Jack laughs with relief. “It’s nothing! They don’t know anything about merfolk – I think they even believe we’re all female. They just made a wild stab in the dark, and no one believes them!”

“I don’t know, Jack,” Shitty cautions him. “I think we might need to watch out for this one.”

“No.” Jack shakes his head, breathing more freely. “It’s fine. No one would believe this person. It’s all going to be fine.”

~~~~~

Jack’s phone rings far too early the next morning. He rolls over, grabs it off his nightstand and glances blearily at it. At the sight of Shitty’s mother’s name, he props himself up in bed and answers the phone.

“Jack? Sweetheart? Are you okay?” Jack smiles at the familiar voice. He hasn’t spoken with Professor Endicott-Knight in too long. He idly wonders if she’s calling to scold him for not having checked in for a while – but at 6:24 in the morning?

“’M fine,” he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “Why?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, then Professor Endicott-Knight cautiously asks, “Have you seen the video?”

“What video?”

“Hang on a second, hon, I’ll text you the link.”

Jack hears her distantly muttering. “Now where is that…? How do I…? Oh! No, not that. Got it!” Her voice rings out more clearly. “Check your texts, you should get it soon.”

Within seconds, Jack’s phone buzzes with a text message. As promised, Professor Endicott-Knight has texted him a YouTube URL.

“Go ahead and watch it,” she instructs him. “It’s not very long. I’ll wait.”

The video is titled “MERMAIDS ARE REAL: SHOCKING TRUTH REVEALED!” and was posted by the Mermaid Seeking channel – apparently MermaidSeeker from reddit. It opens on a slightly disheveled man seated at a desk, speaking animatedly to the camera.

“Rog here. Welcome back to Mermaid Seeking. Okay. Alright. Okay. Long-time viewers know I’ve had a particular, hm, I suppose you could say ‘passion’, ever since Daryl Hannah romanced Tom Hanks way back when.” He laughs. “We’ve seen the artifacts, we’ve talked marine biology,” he ticks off each item on his fingers. “And we’ve discussed ancient Atlantis. But now finally – finally! – we have the proof that we’ve _all_ been waiting for: Mermaids. Are. Real.” As he speaks, the last three words of his sentence pop up in big block letters across the left side of the screen.

The YouTuber chuckles wheezily. “Now, I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock, but the rest of us have been shaken to our core by the BITYMI mystery language.” He pronounces the channel’s abbreviation phonetically so it sounds like “Bitty Me”. “You’ve seen it, you’ve puzzled over it, and if you haven’t, here it is.” It cuts to several seconds of Bittle looking irritated while Jack swears off-camera in a mix of Mermish and English before cutting back to Rog.

“I’ve been doing some research.” Rog gestures in the air. “And you know what I’ve found out? Those mystery words don’t match any known language. Any known _human_ language! And you know what that means? You know what it was? I’ll tell you what it was! Mermaid-speak!” The words “Mermaid-Speak” appear in a sparkle font beneath his head.

“Now I know, I know what you’re thinking. I know what you want to ask me. You want to ask me, you want to say ‘Rog, that doesn’t sound like a mer _maid._ ’ And that’s… that’s… we don’t really know what mermaid’s voices sound like, okay? Who’s to say? Who’s to say? They could have deep voices. Who are we to judge? Let’s not judge. Or… or… or… if they reproduce sexually, then they need both mermaids and mermen. And if mermen are real, then that means… it means that mermaids are real!” The words “MERMAIDS ARE REAL” pop up again, partially obstructing his face.

He rubs his hands together. “Friends, this is a good day. This is a great day! I _told_ you! What did I say? I’ve been saying… I’ve been saying it for _years_ now. And now we have proof. Today is the day we have proof. Mermaids are real. Thank you.” The video ends with a black screen with the words “MERMAIDS ARE REAL, © 2013 MermaidSeeker” in red block font.

“Huh.” Jack stares at the screen until the next video begins to load. That was… something.

“Jack? Jack, sweetheart, are you still there?” Professor Endicott-Knight’s voice calls out.

“Oh! Euh, yes.” He holds the phone back up to his ear again. “I’m here.”

“You watched it?”

Jack nods before remembering that he’s on the phone. “Yes.”

“How are you feeling, Jack? Talk to me.”

“Euhhhhh…” Jack hesitates. “Fine. I’m fine. It doesn’t really have anything to do with me. I kind-of feel bad for my new Hausmate, though. That’s him on the video.”

“Jack.” The professor chides him in her no-bullshit voice. “You lived in my house for three years. I recognize your voice when I hear it.”

“That’s… euh… yeah, that’s…” Jack rubs his free hand across the back of his neck. “There must have been some kind of a problem with Bittle’s mic. Some kind of glitch or something. Made me sound all weird and wrong.” He laughs half-heartedly. “So weird.” His voice comes out higher-pitched than usual.

“Jack.” When Jack doesn’t respond, Professor Endicott-Knight continues. “You boys really aren’t as good at keeping secrets as you think you are.”

“I don’t know what you–” Jack protests.

“I know. I’ve always known.”

Jack nearly drops his phone. “What? Sorry. What? I… what do you know? Exactly?”

The professor sighs heavily. “You don’t think I believed that ridiculous story about you being Canadian, did you?”

Jack nearly stops breathing. Yes, yes he _had_ thought that she’d believed he was Canadian. He and Shitty had been so careful to hide his secret all those years.

“That story only worked with your schoolmates because,” she sighs again, “well, because Americans are so damn ethnocentric. I’ve been to Canada, you know. Hell, I have colleagues who are Québécois. Your accent is lovely, Jack, but it’s not French Canadian.”

“Euhhhh…”

“Canada really isn’t _that_ different from the United States,” she continues. “Not different enough to explain why nearly everything you encountered in your first six months in Boston was brand-new to you.”

“How – how long have you known?” Jack stammers.

“I knew the two of you weren’t telling me the full truth about you from the start. It took a bit longer to figure out that you’re a merperson, but I’ve known for ages.” She lowers her voice. “Look. Don’t let my son know, but he has tells. As do you. The two of you always give each other nervous looks anytime a topic even remotely related to water or swimming comes up. And you won’t even leave the house in the rain unless you’re covered head-to-toe in rain gear. You did a fair enough job of hiding it from everyone else, but between the two of you, you dropped enough inadvertent hints for a close observer to put it together.”

Jack’s heart plummets. “If you knew, then why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“It was obvious that you wanted it to remain a secret, and I respect your boundaries. I never would have brought it up if I hadn’t seen that video.” Her voice softens. “How are you planning to handle it?”

Jack laughs. “Handle it? You mean the ‘Mermaids Are Real’ video? There’s nothing to handle!”

“Jack.” There’s a note of caution in her voice.

“Sure, it’s on YouTube and it’s embarrassing,” he continues. “But who would ever believe it? He’s just a crazy man–”

“Jack.”

“…A neurodivergent person ranting,” he finishes. “He has no credibility whatsoever. Anyway, I doubt anyone will even see it.” He scoffs. “Out of all of the videos on YouTube, who would ever choose to watch that one. How did _you_ even find it?”

“Jack. It’s gone viral.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who need more detail on the panic attack:
> 
> Jack has a panic attack after seeing a comment on Reddit identifying the language he'd spoken on Bitty's video as "mermaid-speak". He comes out of it with Shitty's assistance. Four paragraphs, about halfway through this chapter. 
> 
> If you wish to avoid it, skip the paragraph beginning "The post is titled “WAKE UP TO THE TRUTH THAT THE SO-CALLED MYSTERY LANGUAGE WAS MERMAID-SPEAK.”" and the next 3 paragraphs after it. Pick up from “You okay? You sure you feel up to this?” or skip to the next section a few paragraphs below that. Jack will be OK.


	4. Viral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trigger warnings for this chapter might be a bit spoiler-ish. Check the work tags up above, and if you want to know more details then pop on down to the end notes for a summary.

Professor Endicott-Knight was right.

The video is being discussed on late-night television, it’s being made into gifs and memes – the most popular being a particularly unflattering screenshot of Rog mid-blink – it’s been autotuned… people post reaction videos. It’s so widespread that even Jack couldn’t have missed it.

Although he is unseen and unnamed in the Mermaid Seeking video, it doesn’t take long for fellow Wellies to click through to Bittle’s video and recognize Jack as the speaker of the “mystery language”. Soon, he can’t even cross Lake Quad without people calling him “mermaid” or yelling garbled – and frankly offensive – imitations of Mermish at him. Jack doesn’t know what’s worse: that so many people are so close to a truth he’s tried to keep hidden, that they’re treating it as if it were a joke, or that the relative anonymity of his first two years of college is gone. He’s started spending most of his time holed up in the Haus when he doesn’t have classes.

As difficult as it is for Jack, Bittle has it much worse. Jack’s involvement with the video is virtually unknown outside of Samwell, but Bittle’s face is prominently featured in the “MERMAIDS ARE REAL” video. A three-second clip of Bittle’s expression transitioning from surprise to irritation is widely used as a reaction gif, and a screenshot of Bittle rolling his eyes is turned into a meme, generally accompanied by variations on “That feeling when…”

“Bitty! Holy shit, you’ve gotta see the latest TFW, it’s the best one yet!” Justin and Adam bound into the kitchen, where Bittle had been determinedly scrubbing at a pot for the last several minutes. Jack suspects that the pot must be clean by now, but he’s been too busy avoiding eye contact with Bittle while eating his morning bowl of oatmeal to be sure.

Bittle’s shoulders droop. He gingerly places the pot on the drying rack and the scrubber in the sink caddy, then turns around, pinching the bridge of his nose. “All right. Let’s see it.” He holds his hand out for Justin’s phone. “That feeling when,” he reads aloud, “mermaids invade your cooking video. Ha, ha,” he laughs dryly. “That… is… accurate.”

“I never thought I’d be living with two internet celebs,” Justin remarks.

“I know bro, it’s pretty ’swawesome!” Adam fist bumps Justin.

They both grab fruit out of Bittle’s carefully arranged fruit bowl. “Okay, bros, gotta dash, catch you later!” Justin waves a banana at them on his way out of the kitchen.

“Meep morp, Jack!” Adam speaks around a mouthful of apple. It’s not even close to Mermish.

Bittle collapses into the chair next to Jack’s and leans forward, gently banging his head against the table. “I think I’m going to delete my YouTube channel.”

Jack starts. He turns his chair to face Bittle, shaking his head in confusion. “Why?”

Bittle sits up and shoots Jack a dirty look. “Why? Really, Jack? You of all people know why.”

“Bits.” He scoots closer. “You loved that channel. At least,” he stammers, “it seemed like you did.”

“I did when it was a baking vlog!” Bittle throws his hands up in the air. “Now the comments are all mermaid jokes and memes. I used to have a personal relationship with my subscribers; they used to be people I knew in real life or had met online. They cared about my recipes and about me, not about who can make the wittiest comment. I used to dream about my channel making it big, but not like this. I don’t want to be known as the irritated kid in the mermaid video for the rest of my life.” He slumps over the table. “I deleted the peach cobbler video, by the way. And it’s one of my favorite recipes.”

Jack jerks back in disbelief. “But it was a really good video!”

Bittle lifts his head and looks at Jack. “So you did see it.”

“Oh… euh… I…”

Bittle sighs. “Who am I kidding? Everyone has seen it! I can hardly blame you for wanting to know what all the fuss was about. It did make you famous, after all.” He pounds his fist against the table, startling Jack with the ferocity of his sudden anger. “Why did you have to do it? Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut? Or come downstairs a half hour earlier or later? Or…” He buries his head in his hands.

Jack feels like he’s about ten thousand feet under the surface. Bittle is absolutely right, of course. This, all of this, is Jack’s fault. He’d lost his temper, slipped into Mermish, and basically ruined Bittle’s life.

“No.” Bittle sighs, raising his head again. “No, that was horrible of me. You’re a victim here, too.” He shakes his head. “It’s my fault.”

“None of this is your fault,” Jack protests.

“It is! I didn’t have to leave that part in the video. I could have _easily_ edited it out. I’d debated with myself over whether to leave it in the final edit, but I was just feeling so frustrated and I…” he hangs his head, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “I guess some part of me had hoped that if other people heard you yelling at me, they might sympathize with me.” He turns toward Jack, tears brimming in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jack. You didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.”

Jack’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve Bittle’s apology. “Oh! It’s… it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” Bittle insists. “Don’t think I haven’t heard them call you ‘mermaid’, Jack Zimmermann! Or make fun of how you sounded in the video, like–” he hooks his thumb in the direction of the door that Adam and Justin had exited through minutes earlier. He sighs. “I only wish I could figure out what happened to the audio to make your French sound so garbled!”

“Oh! Yes.” Jack straightens. “That was certainly… some kind of glitch!”

“Obviously.” Bittle laughs. “Honestly, some people. Trying to argue that you’re some kind of merman, or… or alien… or speaking Klingon, as if you even know what that is. At least the ones who think I doctored it are talking some kinda sense. I suppose I can forgive total strangers for thinking I have so little integrity that I’d alter my own videos just for the views.” Jack can tell from the look on Bittle’s face that Bittle will _not_ actually forgive them.

“Euh…” Jack searches for something to say. “Maybe you could repost the peach cobbler video?”

“What?” Bittle pulls a face. “Lord, no! I don’t want to bring all this down on me again! Oh, and you too,” he adds.

“No, upload it without the Mer… ‘mystery language,’” Jack continues excitedly. An idea is taking root. “Just focusing on the peach cobbler. Maybe with a new introduction explaining that you’ve edited it down because the food got lost in all the fuss. Because that recipe meant something to you. And because that part of the video was really good, Bits. It really was.”

Bittle smiles wetly at him. “Thanks. I wish I could.” He wipes away a tear with the side of his hand then sighs heavily. “I uploaded another video last week. My prizewinning apple mini pies. I got a handful of supportive comments from long-time subscribers.” He shakes his head. “The rest were all variations on ‘Where’s the mermaid?’ and TFW memes.”

Jack reaches over to rest his hand gently on Bittle’s. “I’m sorry.”

Bittle shakes his head stoically. “Not your fault.”

“Even if it’s not… I’m sorry.”

Bittle blinks back tears and smiles at him. “Thank you.” He flushes and looks away. “I guess I’ll just have to find a different hobby.”

Jack squeezes Bittle’s hand. “It’ll blow over. I promise. Before long, the conspiracy theorists will find something new to obsess over, the trolls will get bored, and people will move on to some new meme. But your real subscribers will stick around for you. You’ll see.”

~~~~~

That evening, Bittle surprises Jack by declaring that they’re better off facing the campus together rather than on their own. He insists on hooking his arm in Jack’s and striding side-by-side to the cafeteria. He shoots icy glares at anyone who so much as glances at them.

And maybe people have already grown bored of the memes, or maybe they’re just intimidated by Bittle, but for the first time in a week Jack doesn’t get any mermaid comments, and Bittle doesn’t get any “that feeling when” jokes.

“Maybe you should be my chaperone from here on out.” Jack sets his tray of chicken fingers next to Bittle’s on the cafeteria table, still not fully believing how easy their walk across campus had been.

“Maybe I should.” Bittle beams up at him. In that moment Jack could swear he’d do anything to get Bittle to smile at him like that again.

~~~~~

Perhaps it was premature to expect the attention to completely go away, but it’s not as bad with Bittle by his side. Jack’s in awe of how Bittle can completely shut down any joker within twenty feet of him with just a defiant side-eye and a cutting remark. He assumes that Bittle must get tired of having to defend Jack all the time, yet for some reason Bittle keeps hanging out with him even after the hubbub over the video dies down.

~~~~~

 _Snerk_. Bittle lets out a barely-suppressed snort in the reading room at Founder’s.

“What?” Jack looks up from his notes. They’ve taken to studying together, although Jack does most of the studying. Bittle has a terrible habit of spending his library time on the phone. Jack practically has to coax him to study for his exams. It’s… surprisingly endearing.

Bittle looks up guiltily from his phone and pulls an earbud out of his ear. “Oh! Jack! I’m so sorry to disturb you. Go on back to your studying, now.”

“No, what is it?” Jack presses.

Bittle flushes. “I… was rewatching the Mermaid Seeking video.”

“What? Why?” Jack raises his voice more than he had intended, earning him glares from his fellow students. “Why?” he repeats in a whisper.

“I don’t know, trying to torture myself, I guess.” Bittle shrugs. “It’s actually…” He takes a deep breath. “Now that the comments have stopped and I’m not feeling so emotional about it all, I can sorta see what all of the fuss was about. It’s actually kinda funny.” He presses a hand to his mouth, shaking with giggles. “He just…” Bittle snorts again, earning them even more glares from their neighbors. “He called my channel ‘Bitty Me!’” He laughs out loud before clapping both hands over his mouth.

Bittle honestly looks adorable right now, with one earbud still dangling from his left ear, quaking with laughter. Jack doesn’t know that he’s ever seen Bittle so delighted outside of the kitchen. And thanks to Rog of all people!

After a few moments, Bittle composes himself enough to take his hands away from his mouth and speak again. “I never thought about people abbreviating ‘Bake It ’Til You Make It’ and then attempting to pronounce the acronym but _dear Lord_ it is perfect! I know I shouldn’t, but if I ever make another video I am one thousand percent going to drop ‘Bitty Me’ at some point in that video!”

~~~~~

About a month later, Bittle uploads a new video to YouTube. True to form, he opens the video by announcing “Welcome back to ‘Bake It ’Til You Make It,’ or as some of y’all like to call it, ‘Bitty Me!’” He winks at the screen.

An art student friend of Bittle’s has created a new title sequence for the vlog. A cartoon of Bittle, wearing an apron and holding a bowl and spoon, smiles in the lower right hand corner of the screen while the words ‘Bake It ’Til You Make It’ coalesce into the BITYMI abbreviation. A speech balloon containing the words “Bitty Me!” appears next to cartoon-Bittle’s head at the end of the title sequence. Jack and Bittle had previewed the art for the sequence together when Larissa had sent the preliminary sketches; it had been Jack’s idea to add the speech balloon.

A week after that, Bittle uploads a re-edited version of the peach cobbler video. He cries at the outpouring of love and support he gets in the comments of the re-edited video. Several subscribers tell him that they had been heartbroken when he’d pulled the original video down even though they had understood the reason why, as it had been one of their favorite recipes of his. Jack would be lying if he claimed that he didn’t tear up a bit too.

A few weeks later, Bittle invites Jack to guest star in one of his videos. Jack is hesitant at first; he doesn’t want to be recognized and start everything up all over again. But Bittle promises to protect Jack’s identity and to pull the video if anyone so much as suggests he’s the “mystery language” speaker. And Jack’s finding it increasingly difficult to say no to Bittle.

Making the video turns out to be a lot of fun. As promised, Bittle doesn’t identify Jack by name, simply as “one of my Hausmates.” He lets Jack demonstrate some of the simpler steps of the recipe, while Bittle takes over when needed.

“Well, you tried sweetheart, now let me show you how it’s done.” Bittle clucks his tongue at the disaster Jack’s made of trying to roll out a pie crust. Jack expects Bittle to push him aside and take over for him, but instead he squeezes in next to him, rests his hands on top of Jack’s on the rolling pin, and demonstrates rolling it out together without missing a beat in his narration. Bittle’s hands are soft and warm on Jack’s.

Jack feels a pleasant thrill start in his chest and spread out over his limbs. He’s sure he must look awkward, so he covers it with a joke. “You make this look easy as pie.”

Bittle rolls his eyes. “Oh Lord, that was a _terrible_ pun.” And just like that, they fall back into an easy chirping rhythm.

The buzz Jack gets from filming with Bittle lasts less than twelve hours. He wakes up in a panic in the middle of the night, certain that his secret will be out as soon as Bittle posts the video. MermaidSeeker will be back. Or someone more credible. Or someone from Samwell will post his name in the comments or leak it to the press. Or…

When Jack stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, he’s working on three hours of sleep.

“Oh! Jack! Um…”

Jack’s heart races at the sight of Bittle in the kitchen. Of course he’s in the kitchen; he’s nearly always in the kitchen, this should not be a surprise.

“I, um…” Bittle fidgets. “I edited the video together last night, and I think it looks real good. Maybe you’d like to… watch it with me?” He blushes.

Jack freezes. This is his opportunity to tell Bittle how nervous he’s feeling about the video. Or to ask Bittle not to post it. Or to check it for anything incriminatory before Bittle posts it.

Or he could just run.

“Euh, no.” Jack grabs an orange from the fruit bowl and bolts out the door.

~~~~~

“Brah, I love you, but what the fuck was that in the kitchen this morning?” Shitty corners Jack the instant he returns to the Haus that evening.

Jack had used every excuse he could find to avoid his Hausmates all day; taking alternate routes to his classes, studying in an out-of-the-way cubicle in Norris, and grabbing lunch and dinner at Jerry’s instead of risking running into one of them in the cafeteria. But, he couldn’t avoid them forever. Of _course_ Shitty had found him as soon as he got home.

“Can we talk about it in private?” Jack hisses. He hurries upstairs to his room before anyone can see him. He doesn’t bother to check whether Shitty follows him, but he isn’t surprised when Shitty enters his room moments behind him.

“Better?” Shitty pulls the door shut behind him.

Jack shrugs, but he scooches over on his bed to leave room for Shitty.

Shitty climbs on the bed, crossing his legs in front of him. “What the hell, brah? I think you hurt Bitty’s feelings this morning. He’s been acting weird all day, and you’ve been fucking nowhere. What’s going on?”

Jack fiddles with the edge of his comforter. “Bittle and I made a video last night. You know, for his YouTube channel.”

Shitty breaks out into a huge grin. “Ohhhhhh? What kind of video?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“A baking video, obviously.” Jack whacks Shitty in the face with a pillow.

Shitty catches the pillow and settles it behind his back, stretching out on the bed. “So what’s the problem, then?”

“I just…” Jack avoids his gaze. “I couldn’t stop thinking last night about what might happen when he posts it. Who might see it. That it might be a terrible idea. About… you know… what happened the last time I appeared in one of his videos.”

Shitty straightens and lays a hand gently on Jack’s forearm. “That’s is a totally valid concern. I hear you, brah. What would make you feel better?”

“I don’t know.” Jack rolls over, burying his face in his pillow.

After a long moment, Shitty asks, “Would it help if we watched it together?”

Jack takes ten deep breaths, letting the thought sink in. “Maybe.”

After asking Jack about a thousand times whether he was ready and assuring him about another thousand times that they could stop the video at any time, Shitty starts up Bittle’s latest video on Jack’s laptop.

It’s actually not bad. It’s pretty nice, in fact.

Bittle was right, he didn’t say anything to tie Jack to the peach cobbler video. Jack doesn’t look anywhere near as awkward as he had thought he’d look. And Bittle is effervescent.

Jack looks over at Shitty as the video ends. “It was okay.” His chest feels a little bit looser – not totally back to normal, but the tightness is easing.

“You see? All that worry for nothing.” Shitty ruffles Jack’s hair. “Now you need to go apologize to Bittle for freezing him out this morning.”

“Hang on.” Jack takes a deep breath. “I need to check the comments first.”

“No way.” Shitty shakes his head. “Everybody knows you’re not supposed to check the comments on YouTube.”

Jack cuts his eyes at him. “Was that your opinion on the peach cobbler video?”

Shitty side-eyes him for a long moment, then points at the computer screen. “Let’s see these comments.”

Jack holds his breath through the first couple of comments, but they’re actually okay. They’re extremely complimentary to Bittle and several of them even speak highly of him, although none of them connect him to MermaidSeeker or the original peach cobbler video. In fact, some of the comments make him blush.

Shitty notices, too. In fact, he won’t stop elbowing Jack in the side. “Looks like we’ve got some shippers in the comments section, huh? Huh?”

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to know.” Jack shuts the laptop with a satisfying click. He considers going downstairs or knocking on Bittle’s door to apologize, but he’s a little too embarrassed to face him, and much too comfortable in his own room to venture out tonight.

~~~~~

He seeks Bittle out first thing the next morning.

“Oh!” Bittle startles when Jack enters the kitchen. “Jack! It’s good to see you! I… um…” he twists a dish towel in his hands. “I posted that video yesterday, but I could delete it if you don’t want me to. Or I could delete it right now! I shouldn’t have posted it without running it by you first. Let me delete it right now.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“Bittle! Don’t delete the video!” Jack holds a hand up to stop him. “You were right, the video’s good. I’m sorry I was weird about it yesterday.” He runs a hand across the back of his neck. “I just got kind of nervous that someone would recognize me. But that was silly of me. Even if someone did recognize me, what would happen? A couple of comments on the internet?” He laughs nervously.

Bittle claps a hand over his mouth. “You’re right. Here I was excited about the video and I didn’t even think to check in with you about how you were feeling. I should have given you a chance to preview it first. I’ll just delete it.” He reaches for his phone again.

“Bits, don’t!” Jack steps forward and grabs the phone out of Bittle’s hand, holding it out of reach above his head. “I told you I liked the video. I don’t want you to delete it.”

“Oh. You watched the video? And… and you liked it?” Bittle gazes up at him, a blush spreading across his cheeks.

“I did,” Jack admits. “You’re a great video editor. And, euh, YouTube host. You even made someone as awkward as me look good.”

“Well, that was no trouble at all, Jack Zimmermann, you’re a natural in front of the camera.” Bittle playfully shoves Jack’s chest. “We should collab again some time.”

“Maybe we should.” Jack’s cheeks burn.

“So…” Bittle’s voice trails off.

“So,” Jack repeats.

“So, you probably need to get to class,” Bittle finishes.

“That’s true, I do,” Jack agrees. “And I could use a chaperone.”

“Hmm, I think I could manage that.” Bittle’s smile is like the sun after a rainstorm, and it makes Jack feel just as warm.

~~~~~

The first thing Jack notices when he steps outside is what a lovely day it is. It’s perfect fall weather. The air is crisp and breezy but not yet frigid. A few dark red leaves still cling to the branches of their tree, but there’s a dusting of crunchy brown leaves all over the lawn. If they rake it up this afternoon, they may have a large enough leaf pile to jump in.

“Target acquired. Identity confirmed. Let’s move.”

Everything seems to happen at once. Before Jack knows what’s happening, he’s surrounded by people in military uniforms. Someone yanks his hands behind his back and clicks handcuffs over his wrists.

Some people fight when they’re in danger and some people flee. Hell, _Jack’s_ usually one to flee. But in that moment Jack simply freezes. There’s no running or fighting his way out of this.

“But… no! We haven’t done anything wrong!” Bittle cries out.

Shitty runs out of the Haus with Justin and Adam close behind. “This is illegal! Where’s your warrant? What about his Miranda rights?” he demands.

“Stand back or we’ll arrest you too for harboring an illegal immigrant,” one of Jack’s captors snarls.

“Jack is a Canadian citizen and he is in the U.S. legally!” Bittle protests, his hands on his hips.

Shitty and Jack share a look.

One of the soldiers – Jack is having a hard time telling them apart, but this one holds himself as if he were in charge – laughs ironically. “This is no Canadian. And Miranda rights apply to humans, not merpeople.”

Their neighbors are starting to gather, gawking at the commotion from across the street. None of them show any indication of trying to help Jack or to stop what’s happening. A few have their phones out, most likely recording it. Even if Jack could find a way out of this situation, he’d never live a normal surface life again.

“Are you serious?” Bittle’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Oh. My. God. Don’t tell me the U.S. military is here at my Haus because you believe the rantings of an internet conspiracy theorist?”

“Bittle, it’s… complicated,” Jack begins. He tries to take a step toward Bittle, but one of the soldiers jerks him back so hard that he nearly falls down.

“No, it’s simple.” Bittle turns to face their neighbors, raising his voice to be heard across the street. “I hope y’all’re recording this. The world needs to see the military trampling on our rights and arresting an innocent man over a rumor!”

“Bits, no,” Jack pleads.

“Bitty, maybe this is not the best idea,” Shitty cautions.

“We’ve got your back, Jack,” Justin declares from behind him.

“You army assholes are going down once this hits Twitter!” Adam shouts.

“That’s enough,” the man in charge turns and points a finger at one of the soldiers. “Spray him down. We need to see what we’re dealing with.”

“That’s assault and battery!” Shitty’s voice breaks. It only ever does that when he’s panicking.

A soldier pulls a large pressurized water gun out of a nearby truck and begins pumping it.

“Well, this oughta be good.” Bittle crosses his arms expectantly.

“Nothing to see here!” Shitty waves his hands frantically at the neighbors. “Stop fucking staring at us, you assholes! Go back inside your motherfucking homes!”

At Shitty’s mention of the neighbors, several soldiers crowd in around Jack, forming a human wall blocking their view.

“No, they need to see this!” Bittle cries out.

 _Shit_. Jack looks from Bittle’s indignant face, to Shitty, still desperately trying to convince the neighbors to leave, to Adam and Justin curiously looking on, to his stone-faced captors. He can see so clearly how this is all going to end. He’s going to spend the rest of his life – however long they’ll keep him alive for – in a tank somewhere, waiting to be vivisected. As if that weren’t awful enough, they’re going to humiliate him in front of… in front of everyone before they march him away.

“I surrender,” Jack blurts out.

“Jack, no!” Bittle looks appalled.

The man who seems to be in charge looks at Jack appraisingly, then nods at a soldier standing to Jack’s right. “Put him in the truck.”

The soldier holding the water gun groans. “But I wanted to–”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that at the holding facility,” the officer cuts him off. The soldier next to Jack yanks on his elbow and leads him to a truck parked haphazardly outside the Haus. Its back wheels are parked on the grass, probably digging tire marks into the lawn.

“Shitty, there must be something you can do,” Bittle pleads. “He’s innocent!”

“There’s nothing we can do right now, and it fuckin’ blows, but we’ll figure something out,” Shitty promises. He raises his voice so Jack can easily hear him even as he walks away from them. “This is not over. It’s not goodbye, Jack!”

He’s wrong, of course. Jack knows he’ll never see them again. He should tell his friends how much he cares about them and memorize their faces while he still can see them – that’s what always happens in books and movies – but he’s too shaken up to even look at them. He stares at the truck bed as the soldier swings open a door on the back of the truck and leads him inside.

This is it. His last moment of freedom. The last time he’ll ever see Bittle, or Shitty, or the rest of his friends. And he’s too much of a coward to even face them.

The back door of the truck creaks as it begins to close.

“Aw, hell,” someone remarks. Jack barely has time to process it before he is hit with a steady stream of cold water.

 _Not now! Not in front of…_ But it’s too late. His sweatpants split down the middle as his legs fuse together from the top down. His sneakers break at the soles, and then fall off entirely as his tailfin unfurls.

Jack stares in horror at his exposed tail then locks eyes with the young soldier holding the water gun. The soldier stares at him with a mix of fascination and triumph.

Between the angle at which the truck is parked and the partially-closed door, their neighbors can’t see Jack. But Bittle stands directly in front of him on the lawn, staring wide-eyed at his tail. “Jack?”

“For fuck’s sake, Wilkins.” The officer snatches the water gun out of the younger soldier’s hands, then slams the truck door shut, plunging Jack into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last warning to those who skipped to the end notes to find out what the trigger warning is but don't want to be spoiled: check the tags on the work, it's all in there. 
> 
> Full summary for those who want it:
> 
> The first 3/4 or so of this chapter are mostly fluff, humor and romance. Jack and Bitty are teased about the video, but it brings them closer together and eventually people move on to other memes. Jack and Bitty continue to get closer, even filming another YouTube video together, which causes Jack some initial anxiety but turns out great.
> 
> Trigger warning for abduction in the last section of this chapter. Jack gets captured by an unknown faction of the U.S. military while all of his Hausmates and neighbors are watching. Jack worries that his deepest secret will be exposed in front of everyone he cares about, that he'll be tortured and experimented on. Bitty, Justin and Adam try to fight the military, not believing their claims that Jack is a merperson, but Jack surrenders after being threatened with a pressurized water gun. However, just before the doors close on the military transport, a soldier sprays Jack with the water gun, exposing his tail to Bitty. If you want to skip this part, stop reading after "Bittle’s smile is like the sun after a rainstorm, and it makes Jack feel just as warm" and proceed to the next chapter.
> 
> It will all be OK in the end.


	5. Tanked

Jack will never see the sun or the ocean again.

He has no idea how long he’s been trapped in the military complex. Days? Weeks? There are no windows or clocks in the room they're holding him in, so there’s no way to mark the passage of time.

He’s been examined by a seemingly endless chain of scientists in white coats. Every time they let him out of his tank, they make him dress in a humiliating hospital gown and slippers then send him off to be poked and prodded by someone new. The first doctor had performed an extensive physical examination, including blood and urine samples, x-rays and a full-body MRI scan. Next, several scientists had watched him float in his tank for hours on end. A psychiatrist or psychologist of some sort questioned him over and over about his family, life under the sea, how and when he had come to the surface, his relationships with humans, and so on. Jack had refused to answer any of them.

The scientists had repeatedly tried to scan his tail, growing ever-more frustrated each time it had dried into legs in the air before they could perform the scans. Jack had felt satisfied about that until someone finally came up with the idea of wrapping his tail in soaked towels just before placing him in the MRI machine. Jack had thrashed about, ruining their images and nearly dislodging the towels.

He’d been sure he’d succeeded when they had turned off the MRI machine. But, a moment later a nurse had entered the room and injected him with something that made him feel groggy and weak. When he woke up, he was back in the tank. The next time one of his captors entered his room, she had smugly told Jack that the scans of his tail had come out beautifully.

He spends most of his time in a cylindrical tank in an otherwise-empty dark room. The tank cover is latched shut from the outside, although even if it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any point in trying to escape. The door to the room is locked, and from what he’s seen of the facility, it’s a maze of hallways patrolled by armed soldiers.

The tank is just barely tall enough for Jack to stretch out in, but not nearly wide enough to swim around. If they were aiming for psychological torture when they selected this tank, then they succeeded.

No one has cleaned the tank or changed the water once in the time that he’s been here, either. That’s the only real way that he can tell that time has passed – he’s watched algae slowly spread across the walls of the tank and the water grow cloudy. It smells bad, too. He stops noticing it after a few hours in the tank, but it assaults his nose every time he returns to the room after being pulled out for another test or physical examination.

The last time he’d been taken out for yet another appointment with yet another scientist – this time a kinesiologist who had tested his upper and lower body strength until he could barely walk from the muscle strain – the soldier who had walked him back into the room had recoiled at the sight and smell of Jack’s tank. “Clean your tank!” He’d demanded. “Don’t you have any self-respect?”

Jack had stared at the soldier wordlessly as he had removed his hospital gown. He didn’t break his silence until he stepped on the bottom rung of the ladder leading to the top of the tank. “How do you expect me to do that when you keep me locked up in this tank all day?”

“What? You’re not one of those self-cleaning fish?” The soldier had sneered at him, then shoved him into the tank just as Jack reached the small platform at the top.

~~~~~

Jack jerks awake to the sound of the locks on the door clicking open. He can’t remember having fallen asleep, but it doesn’t surprise him that he had. With nothing to occupy him between visits from scientists, he’s taken to drifting in and out of consciousness.

He is mildly surprised when two janitorial staff enter the room, pushing an overly-large cart. They’re wearing matching olive jumpsuits with caps pulled low over their eyes. He didn’t actually think his captors cared enough to clean his tank, but he supposes that they may have finally decided to act if the smell had gotten offensive enough to bother them.

One of the janitors grabs an observation chair and jams it under the door handle as soon as the door shuts behind them. The other runs straight to the tank, pressing his hands against the glass and saying something that Jack can’t make out.

Jack has a policy of ignoring everyone who enters his room, but this is not exactly normal behavior for the humans Jack has encountered since being captured. He floats downward to get a better look at the nearest janitor.

Large, chocolate brown eyes stare at him woefully. Blonde bangs peek out from beneath his cap.

It can’t be.

Jack whips his head around to look at the other janitor, now striding purposefully to his tank without a single cleaning supply in hand. He would recognize the face of his first human friend anywhere.

Jack propels himself upward as Shitty climbs the ladder. Within seconds, he hears the latch release and light pours into the tank from above as the cover pops open. Jack pushes it open the rest of the way, grabs hold of the edge of the tank with both hands and heaves himself up and out onto platform.

“Jack, you beautiful motherfucking bastard!” Shitty exclaims. “Are you all right? What did those cockholes do to you?” He wraps him in a tight hug.

Jack squeezes him back, barely believing that Shitty and Bittle are actually there.

After a few moments, Shitty pulls back from the hug, grimacing. “Ugh. Dude. I am not here to shame you, but you smell like ass.” He tosses Jack a towel that had been draped over his shoulder.

Jack towels off his tail. The faster he can get his legs back, the sooner he can climb down the ladder and get out of there… however that’s going to work. “How in the seven seas did you get in here, anyway?” he asks.

“At first we had no idea where they’d taken you, or how to even start looking. But it was the craziest thing,” Shitty shrugs. “That night, Johnson just showed up at the Haus with two security badges for this military compound. Said they belonged to two of his friends who didn’t need them anymore, and he had a hunch that they might come in handy for us.”

“That’s weird,” Jack comments. He gets his now-dry legs beneath him and steps down onto the top rung of the ladder.

Bittle snorts from the ground. “And then it took us a week to connect the badges to where they were keeping you. And almost another week after that to come up with this plan.”

Shitty shrugs. “Well, in fairness, what's the likelihood that someone hands you security badges to the exact secret military compound that you need to break into? It seemed more likely at the time that it was unrelated to your situation.”

The whole situation doesn’t make a lot of sense to Jack, but then again Johnson did always seem to be one step ahead of the rest of them, in a way that hurts Jack’s head to think about for too long. However, all thoughts of Johnson scatter like so many anchovies when Jack steps off the ladder and turns to face Bittle.

“Euh, hi,” Jack says awkwardly. He’s suddenly acutely aware of his own nudity, and longs for the hospital gown. His cheeks burn.

“Hi.” Bittle smiles up at him, a flush spreading across his own face.

“Thanks for, euh, you know, coming to rescue me.” Jack rubs a hand along the back of his neck.

“Oh! It was nothing,” Bittle protests. “I mean… of _course_ we came to rescue you! You’re, um, very important to me. To us. To both Shitty and me.”

“For fuck’s sake, just kiss already!” Shitty mutters.

“Oh, um.” Bittle blushes an even brighter shade of red. He’s ridiculously adorable and as he bends down, Jack can’t fathom why he hasn’t kissed him sooner.

Bittle is soft, and warm, and he tastes so sweet. Like everything impossibly good coming true. Jack hadn’t let himself think about kissing Bittle during his confinement. It would have been torture to think of something that could never happen, and he wasn’t going to do his captors’ jobs for them. But now Bittle is here, and in his arms, and everything is possible.

“Oh,” Bittle breathes out when Jack pulls away. He smiles shyly, his eyes fluttering open. And then wrinkles up his nose in obvious disgust.

It feels like Jack has been stabbed in the chest. “Oh. That bad?”

“Oh! Lord no, sweetheart!” Bittle’s hand flies to his mouth. “You were… the kiss was… wonderful!” He smiles dreamily. “But… I don’t know how to say this…” He looks just about everywhere but at Jack’s face. “You’re a bit… slimy. And Shitty wasn’t kidding about the smell.”

“Oh! Right!” Jack starts. “They haven’t really cleaned my tank in… ever.”

“We can tell.” Shitty claps him on a shoulder. “Can we save the chit-chat for later? We’ve got a rescue to finish.”

“Right.” Jack rubs his hands together expectantly. “What’s the plan?”

“Oh! This is the best part!” Bittle jogs excitedly over to their housekeeping cart and pulls open two small doors beneath the cleaning supplies stacked on top. “Ta da!” He gestures to the small compartment inside the cart. It’s empty aside from a small stack of clothes and a pair of sneakers.

Bittle hands him the clothes. “Put these on, and then get inside,” he instructs Jack.

Jack peers inside the cart as he pulls on the clothes. The space inside couldn’t be more than two feet wide by three feet across – maybe less. The cart barely clears Jack’s waist, wheels and top shelf included.

“Euh, what, do I just curl up inside there?”

“We removed the inside shelf to give you added space!” Bittle proclaims proudly.

Jack cocks an eyebrow. “Thanks? It’s still going to be pretty cramped, though.”

“Oh, for the love of…!” Bittle’s arms drop to his sides and he rolls his eyes. “Jack, do you have any idea how difficult it was to find a cart with doors on it that was large enough to fit a man your size inside? And to sneak it inside a secret military facility? We spent nearly a thousand dollars on this, and probably took ten years off of my life in stress!”

“Yo, that’s fine, brah,” Shitty shakes his head. “You can just stay in your tank if our escape plan isn’t good enough for you.”

Jack looks from the one to the other. “No, no, that’s fine. I’ll just… climb on in, I guess.”

The inside of the cart is every bit as tiny as it had looked from the outside. Jack’s shoulders barely fit across, and he has to hug his knees to his chest. It’s dark, too; almost no light reaches inside once Shitty closes the doors. And yet, his every nerve is alight with the prospect of freedom. He can’t wait to breathe fresh air and swim in clean water.

So, he’s a bit thrown when a minute passes without any movement. And then another.

“I’m ready,” Jack offers.

“Shh!” Shitty hisses at him. “We’re waiting for a distraction.”

“Distraction?”

“You’ll know it when you hear it,” Bittle promises.

After a few minutes of crouching in silence, Jack hears the muffled sounds of Justin… singing? That can’t be right. It’s hard to tell for certain, since the sound is filtered through what must be several walls.

“That’s our cue,” Shitty declares. The cart lurches forward then abruptly stops.

“Not yet,” Bittle cautions. “He’s singing too quietly. Wait for Adam.”

Moments later, Adam bursts into song, loud and clear despite the distance. “I hope you’re happy / I hope you’re happy too.”

“What the hell?” An unfamiliar voice mutters from outside the room. Footsteps rapidly walk away from them.

“Now!” Bittle declares.

And they’re off. Moving much more slowly than Jack had anticipated, but nonetheless moving steadily away from the tank and the room he hadn’t expected to leave alive.

Bittle groans. “These… cleaning supplies… are a lot heavier than I’d expected.”

“Put your back into it, remember why we’re here, and just keep walking,” Shitty instructs him.

They take a left turn, and then a right. Jack wonders what they’re passing. He didn’t pay close enough attention to the layout of the facility to be able to tell where they are now or how much farther they need to go. He holds himself as still as possible, barely even moving to breathe, terrified of drawing attention from anyone who might be in the halls. He wonders how many people are around. He has no idea whether it’s even day or night.

After what feels like forever but evidently wasn’t even the full length of whatever song Adam and Justin are still singing, the cart slows to a stop. Jack resists the urge to push open the doors from the inside. After all, he still has no idea who or what is outside the cart.

“We’re just finishing cleaning up,” Shitty announces loudly. “We’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“’K,” another unfamiliar voice grunts.

“Did you catch those two jackasses embarrassing themselves outside East Wing?” Shitty asks.

“Huh?”

“There’s two guys singing show tunes out there,” Shitty explains. “Probably frat boys from B.C. on a dare.”

“College kids are the _worst,_ ” the other voice moans.

“They’re still singing. You should go check it out,” Shitty says. “It’s _hilarious._ ”  

“…I’m not supposed to leave my post.”

“Who’s gonna try to break in here at nearly midnight?” Shitty argues. “My buddy and I will stay and watch until you get back. No one will know you were gone. Don’t you deserve a break?”

There’s a pause, and then the sound of a chair scraping across linoleum. “Thanks, bro.” Footsteps walk past the cart and down the hall.

A moment later, the doors to the cart swing open. “We’ve got to go.” Bittle holds out a hand and hoists Jack up and out of the cart.

The fluorescent lighting of the lobby nearly blinds Jack after the dark of the cart, but he doesn’t exactly have time to adjust to the light.

“Go! Go! Go!” Shitty whispers urgently, pinwheeling his arms in the air.

They sprint out the doors to the nearly-empty parking lot. Jack can hear Adam singing much more clearly from the outside. He believes the term for what Adam is doing is “belting” – something about “defying gravity” that Jack is sure he’s heard Adam sing before.

Shitty pulls a keyring out of his pocket and presses a button. The lights blink on a nondescript-looking minivan parked in the front row, and one of the rear doors slides open. “Jack, you’re in the back,” Shitty barks out an order as he climbs into the driver’s seat.

“We just need you to get down low and stay still and quiet for just a few minutes longer,” Bittle explains from the front passenger’s seat. He hands Jack a heavy wool blanket.

In truth, it wouldn’t be difficult to hide in the back seat provided that no one looked too hard or poked around too much. Empty takeout wrappers, discarded cups and half-crushed cans litter the ground. Dirty laundry spills out of a basket on the rear passenger’s side seat. Jack crouches on the ground in front of the laundry bin and covers himself with the blanket.

“And we’re off,” Shitty announces. Jack expects him to burn rubber out of there, but he drives cautiously to the left before pulling to a stop. Jack hears some rustling from the front seat, and the motorized sound of a car window rolling down. “Heading out from the evening shift,” Shitty remarks casually.

There’s a pause, and then yet another voice bids them goodnight. The car starts up again, taking a turn to the right.

“Can he…?” Bittle asks.

“Let’s wait until the highway,” Shitty cautions.

A few more tense moments pass until Jack feels an acceleration and a sense of going uphill. “You can come out now!” Shitty announces. “Buckle that ass up, we’re now officially on the run from the U.S. military.”


	6. Return

Jack pushes the laundry bin aside and climbs up on the rear passenger side seat. He clicks his seatbelt into the buckle and gazes out the window at the roadside signs speeding past them. It finally hits him: He’s free. And he would do just about anything to stay that way.

“Did… we do it?” Bittle asks cautiously.

“We did it!” Shitty whoops.

“We did it!” Jack echoes. “And… I have so many questions.”

“Go for it.” Shitty nods. He switches the turn signal and changes lanes.

Where to start? Jack leans forward so that his head pokes between the two front seats. “What were Justin and Adam doing?”

“We told you,” Shitty explains. “Providing a distraction.”

“Leave it to those two to pick the most unintentionally homoromantic show tune ever.” Bittle rolls his eyes.

“Euh, okay. Won’t they get caught?”

“They’ve got their cover stories all set.” Bittle beams. “They’re just a couple of dumb, drunk Boston frat boys on a dare. There’s no reason to imagine they have anything to do with you.”

“With any luck, the military won’t even notice you’re gone until morning,” Shitty reassures him.

Jack glances about the minivan. “Whose car is this?”

Shitty shakes out his hair, tossing it over one shoulder. “I borrowed it from our neighbors across the street.”

“What?” Jack furrows his brow. “But they hate us! And you hate them!”

Bittle snorts. “Shitty is being liberal with his use of the term ‘borrowed.’”

“If they didn’t want me to borrow it, they shouldn’t have left the keys lying around,” Shitty reasons.

“Inside their house?” Bittle asks syrup-sweetly.

Jack glances from Bittle to Shitty. “That’s… breaking and entering. And grand theft auto.”

Shitty shrugs. “I mean, we just busted you out of a military compound, what’s a little B&E on top of that?”

“But Jack’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Bittle asks with a tremor of fear in his voice.

Shitty and Jack share a look through the rearview mirror.

“…Yeah,” Shitty answers after a long pause. “Look. We just need to get out to my dad’s summer house on Nantucket, and then…”

“…And then we’ll figure it out from there,” Jack continues. Shitty shoots him a grateful look through the mirror.

A little before 2 AM, Shitty pulls over at a highway rest stop about 10 minutes North of Hyannis. It’s basically a hole-in-the-wall; just a small building for restrooms, two vending machines, and a handful of parking spaces. It’s completely empty other than their car. But, it’s quiet and dark and they’re well away from the traffic of I-495. It’s practically a perfect place to hide until the first morning ferry leaves for Nantucket.

As soon as Shitty pulls the key from the engine, Bittle scrambles over the center console and onto Jack’s lap.

“Try to get _some_ sleep, you two,” Shitty clucks his tongue. “We’re going to have to wake up early if we’re going to catch the 6:10 ferry.” He reclines the driver’s seat and rolls over with his back to Bittle and Jack.

“I’ll sleep when we get to Nantucket,” Bittle waves a hand dismissively at Shitty’s back.

~~~~~

It feels like Jack had just fallen asleep when Shitty wakes them. He assumes it’s morning, although it’s hard to tell; it’s still dark out and the windows are frosted over.

“Rise and shine, motherfuckers!” Shitty leans halfway into the back seat, grinning maniacally.

Bittle groans and snuggles in closer to Jack’s chest, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Five more minutes,” he mumbles. Jack wraps an arm protectively around him, not wanting the moment to end either.

“Nope!” Shitty announces gleefully. “It’s already five-thirty, and we still need to drive to Hyannis, find a place to hide the car, and walk the rest of the way to the ferry terminal in time to catch the six-ten.”

Bittle makes a whining noise but sits up nonetheless, rubbing blearily at his eyes. “Just give me a few minutes to freshen up.”

“The restrooms are locked; I already checked,” Shitty explains apologetically while tying up his hair with an elastic he’d pulled off his wrist. “Your options are to go in the bushes or hold it until we get to the terminal.”

Bittle freezes, his arm hanging mid-air. The tips of his ears turn red. After a moment, he climbs back over the center console to the front passenger seat. “I guess I’ll just have to hold it, then,” he replies primly.

And even that is adorable. Jack is in serious trouble.

“I won’t look,” Jack offers.

“Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart.” Bittle beams a thousand-watt smile at him.

It takes a few minutes of circling around residential neighborhoods before they find the perfect hiding spot for the car: at the end of a long dirt road, shaded by a large tree, next to what appears to be an empty summer home. It’s nearly a fifteen minute walk to the ferry terminal; considerably shorter than Jack’s usual morning jogs, although it feels longer between Bittle complaining about the hour and Shitty constantly prodding them to walk faster.

They arrive at the ferry terminal with five minutes to spare. Shitty doesn’t stop pacing until the ferry leaves the bay. When they arrive at Steamboat Wharf, Shitty hails a cab to his father’s house, paying in crisp new twenty dollar bills with a generous tip for discretion. And then it’s home, sweet summer home.

“We’re back,” Jack breathes out as they step inside the front door. Everything’s exactly as he’d remembered it; his old safe haven, here for him when he needs it again.

“It’s been too long, brah.” Shitty claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“You must have a lot of good memories of this place,” Bittle sniffs. If Jack’s not mistaken, there’s a touch of jealousy in his voice, although he’s fairly certain Bittle would deny it.

“Well, yeah.” Jack shrugs. “This is where I first came up to the surface world.” It’s a relief to finally say this out loud after so many years of hiding it. He’d been terrified of being found out for so long, but after everything they’ve been through together, he would trust Bittle with anything.

“What?” Bittle whips his head around to face Jack.

Jack walks to the nearest window and pulls back the curtains. “Right there.” He points to a spot on the beach. Even after five years, he can instantly recognize it.

Shitty steps up next to him and nods in agreement. “Yup, that’s where I first met him. Flopping about in the sand.”

“I was not flopping!” Jack protests. “That is an offensive term!”

“What would you call it?” Shitty raises an eyebrow challengingly.

“I was…” Jack sighs. “I had never stood upright before. Or walked.”

Shitty turns to Bittle eagerly. “He was trying – and failing – to climb that very high bluff right… over… there.” He points to a three-foot high bluff at the edge of the beach. Jack could swear it was taller five years ago.

“I had just swum literally all the way across the ocean!” Jack throws his hands up. “I was exhausted!”

“How old were the two of you?” Bittle looks from Jack to Shitty, a small smile forming at the corner of his mouth.

“He was eighteen,” Shitty hooks a thumb toward Jack, “and I was sixteen.”

“You were babies!” Bittle declares in obvious delight.

“How old are you, again?” Jack raises an eyebrow.

Bittle sniffs, putting on an exaggeratedly offended face. “I’ll have you know that I’m a _very mature_ eighteen-and-a-half.”

After a few more minutes of reminiscing and chirping, Bittle breaks into a wide yawn that quickly spreads to them all.

“Well, I think it’s time to hit the hay.” Shitty squeezes Jack’s shoulder. “I’m gonna head off to my room.”

“Is it still done up emo-style?” Jack asks faux-innocently.

“Th-that was just a phase, and you know it!” Shitty sputters, turning bright red.

Bittle laughs, shaking his head fondly. “You two…”

“Go ahead and take my dad’s room.” Shitty waves his hand at Jack as he heads to the stairs.

“Good night!” Jack announces before starting down the hall.

“It’s morning, but right back atcha,” Shitty replies.

“I’ll just…” Bittle begins uncertainly. “I think I’ll just go with Jack.” He rushes up to Jack’s side, holding his hands to his reddening cheeks.

“I never would have expected otherwise,” Shitty shoots back.

~~~~~

Jack pokes at a bowl of stale dry cereal with a spoon that evening. It’s hardly appetizing, but it's the only food in the pantry and he’s going to need all of the sustenance he can get. Bittle fiddles with his phone at the stool next to him on the kitchen island. He’s not even tweeting or playing with an app, just flipping it over and turning it around and around in his hands.

“I’ll… I’ll text you.” Bittle turns toward Jack. “And I’ll call all the time. And I’ll visit every weekend, even in the winter!”

Jack drops his spoon in the bowl. “What?”

Bittle swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I know you bought a one-way ticket for the ferry. You’re not coming back with us. I understand. You’re going to hide out here while Shitty and I return to Samwell… aren’t you?” He glances from Jack to Shitty and back again.

Jack shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be safe for any of us if I stayed here.”

Shitty leans his elbows on the opposite side of the kitchen island. “The feds must have discovered by now that Jack’s missing. It won’t take long for them to look into Jack’s known associates and find out that I have a house out here,” he explains gently.

Jack swivels the stool to face Bittle head-on. “We’re here so I can go back home, Bits. As soon as it’s dark enough for me to swim away unseen. It’s the only safe place for me now.”

“No.” Bittle’s voice is thick with emotion. “No!” He shakes his head hard.

Jack takes one of Bittle’s hands in both of his own. “It’s the only way to keep us all safe, Bits. And… I think it’s time. It’s been five years. My kingdom needs me. My _parents_ need me. And I miss them.”

“But you won’t miss me?” Bittle sobs, a tear running down his cheek.

“Of _course_ I’ll miss you!” Jack wipes the first tear away with his thumb, but too many follow to stop them all. His heart feels like a stone inside his chest. “I’d never leave unless I had to!”

“It’s just not fair!” Bittle swipes his forearm across his eyes. “We were just getting started! Why did the stupid Army or, or whoever they are have to kidnap you? Why did MermaidSeeker have to make that video and why did everyone else have to pay attention to him? Why couldn’t they all have just left us alone? Why couldn’t there be a way for us to be together?”

Jack’s breath catches at a thought. An impossible thought. Almost too absurd to say aloud. “There’s… one possibility. It’s crazy but I heard stories about it when I was a child. I didn’t really believe them, but then again I didn’t really believe that merfolk’s tails could turn into legs on the surface either.”

“Well, fucking spit it out already!” Shitty slaps his hand on the kitchen island, his face lit up in anticipation.

“The merfolk told stories about a surface man who had fallen in love with a merwoman and could breathe underwater as long as he was with his true love,” Jack explains. “I always thought he was a myth but maybe…”

“…Maybe I could come with you,” Bittle breathes out.

“Okay, but…” Shitty interrupts them. “The two of you are adorable together, but Bitty, are you really prepared to leave everything and almost everyone you know behind?”

Jack cuts his eyes at Shitty. This may be the first time in the history of their friendship that Shitty has been the voice of reason. He’d resent it, if not for the look of genuine worry on his friend’s face.

“I… I think I am,” Bittle answers slowly at first, but picks up speed as he continues. “I feel like I’ve been searching my whole life for a place where I fit in. Maybe this is why.” He leans forward, grasping Jack’s hands. “Maybe _you’re_ where I’m supposed to be.”

Jack’s heart is beating impossibly hard. Could the stories be real? Things like this don't really happen – at least, not to Jack. “But what if it doesn’t work? What if we get in the ocean together and you can’t breathe?”

“Then I’ll swim right back up to the surface,” Bittle answers decisively. “And if that happens, then we’ll… we’ll figure something out. Maybe it will be safe for you to come visit in a few weeks… or months.” He looks down at their joined hands. “Look. I don’t know whether it will work. And I don’t know whether what we have will be forever but I want to give it a try. It feels too important not to try. And if it does work…”

“…Then we can be together,” Jack finishes. He leans closer to Bittle, brushing his fingers across Bittle’s cheek.

Shitty clears his throat. “Ohhhh-kay. I can see you two lovebirds need some privacy. _Again._ Why don’t I make myself scarce for a few hours?” He squeezes Jack’s shoulder affectionately on his way out.

~~~~~

Jack shivers on a secluded stretch of ‘Sconset Beach in the dark of the night with the two most important people to him in the world. White-capped waves crash onto the shore – dangerous swimming conditions for humans. Jack could swim through the current on his own, of course, but he couldn’t possibly ask Bittle to do it. It was a bad idea, and Jack was foolish to believe that it could work.

“Okay. Well.” Bittle takes a deep breath and turns to Jack. “If this plan of ours doesn’t work, then I might need a lil’ extra boost from you to get me back up to the surface. I wouldn’t want to be pulled under by that riptide.” He pulls his sweater up over his head and drops it on the sand.

“You can’t be…” Jack drags his eyes away from the surf and turns to Bittle. “You’re not planning to swim in that?”

Bittle pulls off his sneakers and socks. “Well, I didn’t pack my swimming trunks, so I’m going to have to make do with my boxers.” He hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans, then turns to Shitty, blushing. “Um, maybe you could look away?”

Shitty rolls his eyes but holds his right hand up like a blinder next to the right side of his head.

“No… what?” Jack shakes his head. “You can’t swim in those waves. The water is too rough. We’ll wait for calmer seas. Maybe in the morning.”

“Brah, you don’t have time to wait,” Shitty explains gently. “There’s too much of a risk of being seen by townies if you swim in the daytime, and the longer you stay here, the more likely the feds will find you. It’s now or never.”

“We can do this, Jack. I’m sure of it.” Bittle grasps Jack’s forearm with both hands.

“And if a riptide smashes your head against a rock?” Jack asks.

Bittle blanches but smiles bravely. “Well that just won’t happen, because you’ll be there to protect me.”

“I’m not a superhero,” Jack protests.

“No, just a magical fish-man,” Bittle snarks. “Jack, hush. I’m a grown man, let me make this choice. I want to be with you, and I’m not going to let you swim out of my life because you and I are too scared of a few waves.”

Jack opens his mouth to argue, but Bittle shakes his head and continues. “If I can’t breathe underwater, then I’ll swim up to the surface, and if the current is too strong for me to swim to shore then you can pull me up.”

“And I’ll wade in to help,” Shitty pledges.

Jack looks down at Bittle. “Are we doing this?”

Bittle laughs. “We already agreed that we’re doing this.”

“Shits.” Jack’s voice breaks as he turns to his oldest friend. “I… I don’t know whether I’ll ever see you again.”

“Bring it in, you,” Shitty sniffles. He clamps Jack in a tight hug.

“You’re my best friend,” Jack confesses. “Not just my best human friend, my best friend ever. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Shitty scoffs. “Please. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You would have figured out the human stuff with or without me.”

“Maybe.” Jack shrugs. “But I would have been awfully bored without you around for entertainment.”

Shitty barks out a laugh.

Jack takes a half step back. “You’ve been more than a guide to me, and you know it,” he answers soberly. “I couldn’t have asked for a truer friend.”

“Well now you’ve gone and made me cry all over again,” Shitty laughs through tears.

Jack wraps him in another embrace.

All too soon, Shitty mumbles, “You’ve gotta go, Jack.” He steps back and swipes at his nose with his forearm. Jack reluctantly steps back as well.

“Shitty, I’ll miss you,” Bittle says. “I know I haven’t known you and the boys for long, but you all are like brothers to me.” Shitty and Bittle share their own hug. “Please remember to send the note I gave you to my parents when you get back to Samwell.”

“I will,” Shitty promises.

“Time to go.” Bittle turns to Jack.

“Time to go,” Jack repeats.

When they’d started making their plans earlier that day, Jack had envisioned a more romantic and daring departure – leaping off of a rocky outcropping or pier into the depths of the sea. The reality is much more awkward and a tad embarrassing. He sits down on the sand and scoots feet first into the ocean until he’s in deep enough for his tail to transform. In calmer waters he might have only needed to travel in a short distance in order to immerse his whole lower body, but the waves keep retreating before he can fully transform. Finally, he reaches a point where the ocean floor drops several feet and he has enough water to fully unfurl his tail.

He turns around to face Bittle and Shitty on the shore. “Okay. I’m ready for you, Bittle. Remember,” he cautions, “stop and go back if the current is too strong.”

Bittle wades in carefully, his hand outstretched to Jack. Jack reaches his own arm out and grasps Bittle’s hand as soon as he is within reach.

“Be careful,” Jack warns just before Bittle reaches him. “There’s a big drop-off there.”

Bittle nods. “So that’s where we’ll find out whether this will work.” He inches forward until his toes stop just before the drop-off.

“Ready?” Jack asks.

Bittle nods.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Jack!”

Jack nods. “One… two… three!”

Bittle takes a deep breath of air and then plunges under water with Jack.

As soon as he orients himself, Jack turns to Bittle. Bittle holds his free hand to the side of his neck, his eyes wide in shock. Before Jack can decide whether it’s good shock or bad shock, Bittle pulls his hand away from his neck, revealing brand new gills.

Jack’s hand flutters in the water near Bittle’s gills. He feels an urge to touch them in order to verify whether he can believe what he’s seeing, but the more logical part of his brain reminds him that if they are real then Bittle’s gills would be far too delicate to touch.

Bittle opens his mouth and gulps in water. Jack steels himself to grab Bittle and swim him up to the surface if it all goes wrong, but moments later Bittle’s face lights up as he forces water out through his gills. He flings himself at Jack, spinning him around in a joyous circle and then just as quickly releases him and kicks his way up to the surface. Jack swims up right behind him.

“Are you okay?” Shitty rushes toward the shore.

“It works!” Bittle shouts, bobbing up and down in the waves. “Oh my Lord, Shitty, it works!”

Shitty stops short. “You can breathe?”

“I can breathe water!” Bittle exclaims. “I can go with Jack! I can…”

“Go be the prince of the merfolk!” Shitty waves his hand in a shooing motion at them both.

“Euh, _I’m_ the prince of the merfolk,” Jack clarifies, pointing at his chest. “He’d be the, um.” He flushes. “We haven’t really defined things yet…”

“Just go, you glorious motherfuckers!” Shitty shouts. “Go and be safe!”

Jack and Bittle glance at each other. After one final wave goodbye they both dive under the sea. Jack pumps his tail, holding Bittle’s hand tightly in his own as they swim together. As the ocean floor drops down far below the surface, Jack grabs Bittle by the waist and pulls him in for a deep kiss. They have a long swim ahead of them and Jack has no idea how they’ll be welcomed when they return to his father’s kingdom, but somehow he knows that he could face anything with Bittle by his side.

_FIN._

**Author's Note:**

> Check out [Felix’s amazing art](https://felixvanhusss.tumblr.com/post/180073477196/my-art-for-the-omgcpbigbang2018-these-pieces) for this fic!
> 
> I've been working on this in one form or another for the better part of 8 months, and I'm so excited to finally be able to share it publicly! I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't then thanks for reading this far!
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
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>   * Short comments
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